


Some Tremble, Others Break

by smallmachinev



Category: Original Work
Genre: 1880s, Alternate Universe - Western, Bandits & Outlaws, Cowboys, Cowboys & Cowgirls, Demons, Dimension Travel, Door To Another World, Elves, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Exes, Fantasy, Gun Violence, Guns, Historical Fantasy, Horses, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Original Character(s), Original Fiction, Original Universe, Realm Hopping, Slow Burn, Swords & Sorcery, Western, cowboys & demons, dumb boys
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-28
Updated: 2019-10-29
Packaged: 2019-11-15 19:17:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 24,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18079346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smallmachinev/pseuds/smallmachinev
Summary: In 1879, on the edge of the U.S. territories, Cherry Cole finds his life upended when he meets an otherworldly stranger. Updates Monday (as regularly as I can <3 ). Can be found at www.Yeehaw.Fun





	1. PROLOGUE

"This gun's for hire, even if we're just dancing in the dark."

*

 

Ambrose of Willowden, son of Ambriar, searched for the man who killed the king. The snow melted yesterday then froze over in the night. It left a crust thick enough to support the weight of an elf, but not one wearing a hundred pounds of golden plate armor. Ambrose trudged through the snow alone. He left his horse, Ingrid, thirty miles back in the last town. The strain would have killed her. Besides, she was no good on the ice. She was clumsy on the surest ground, stout and on the dumb side for a horse. Ingrid's defects were not lost on the stable master. Ambrose was not well liked. They gave each Darksleeper a horse the day they return from the vacantlands. _If_ they returned. Everyone gawked when Ambroise returned. No one thought he would survive. When Ambrose saw the stout, short legged horse the station master laughed. "You get a horse," he said, "you don't get 'ta pick."

But, despite her flaws, Ingrid was his, and he was hers. Or rather, he was _theirs_.

Ambrose never would imagined that such a tiny ball of lead could kill someone until they pulled it out of the kings chest and handed it to him. No trace of magic revealed how it was sent it so violently through the air. No prince took credit. No one claimed the throne. No coup was revealed. Everyone assumed it was an attack from the vacantlands, and no one wanted to investigate. But the law was clear. Not for the first time Ambrose was chosen for the job no one else wanted.

His only lead was the small ball of lead, so Ambrose went to the blacksmiths. Each one handed back the tiny ball. Each one told them they were sorry they couldn't help.  Wil Blackthorn was the last blacksmith in Perare on his list, but Ambrose found his shop empty. His family was gone, disappeared, without a trace. Neighbors all thought he had packed up and left. That was not unheard of. But Ambrose could see what they could not. What only Darksleepers could see. The signs darkness.

It was like slipping into a worn shoe. Tracking down the vacant ones, the legion that live in the vacantlands. It was easier than trying to squeeze answers out of a tiny ball of lead. It was familiar. Ambrose was on its heels in less than a week. He may not be a well liked Darksleeper, but Ambrose was good at it. Ambrose prayed that the blacksmith was still alive. Praying was a habit he picked up before he became a sleeper. He knew better.

A simple spell could have quieted the sound of his footsteps breaking through the ice, but Ambrose never used magic. He never would never tap into that well of darkness inside him.  _Let it know I'm coming,_ he thought, _let it feel fear for once_. The sky dimmed.

 _They are close,_ said the dark voice inside his head. That dark voice that had been with him since the day he walked out of the shadows and became a Darksleeper.

"Obviously," said Ambrose,"I've been tracking them for a week--"

 _No,_ said the voice, _they are close to death. Can you not feel it?_

Ambrose of Willowden began to run. 

*   *   *

Marielle Blackthorn huddled with her son while something laughed in the darkness. She prayed the fire would grant her some protection, but she knew it would not. It had let her build the fire. If it let her, obviously it was not scared of the fire. Then why let her build it? To keep her from freezing? No. _To keep me busy._ It, too, was building.

Wil died. As bravely as any man could, under the circumstances. The vacant one took his body, and was vacant no longer. It passed by the firelight and Marielle studied what was once her husband. Wil was taller, each joint popped out of its socket and stretched. His forearms were twice their length, his legs bent backwards like a horses. But its eyes were still Wils. That was the worst part. Marielle steeled herself to fight, but she knew it was little use. What should she do with Peter? Her only son. She couldn't... with her own hands. She could never.

But it would.

It laughed again, sounding like someone choking on their own blood. Marielle knew the end was near. She was raised on stories of the vacant, and she raised her son on them as well. The darksleepers were supposed to keep the shadows from their door, contain them in stories. The Darksleepers lived there, the vacantlands, with the dark, fighting it or seducing it. Taking care of it.

The dark turned to her and she steeled herself. This was it. _I will not_ , she thought, _I will not just die._ She pushed Peter behind her and plunged her hand into the fire. Her hand blistered and burned but she did not drop the torch. Flecks of ember mixed with the snow as the creature stepped into the firelight.

 _Do you want your boy to live?_ The voice was inside her head. It ran across her temple like a migraine. Her vision went to pinpricks, but she did not drop the torch.

"No," said Marielle.

 _No? You don't want your boy to live?_  asked the voice. _Let me make you a deal. Come willingly, put down that burning twig, and your son may go free._ The form that was once her husband reached up and re-set its broken neck.

Marielle drew back and swung the torch as hard as she could, but she was too slow. It disappeared back into the darkness, laughing. "Fight me!" Marielle screamed. _Fight me while I still have the nerve,_ she thought. She gripped the burning firewood tighter and followed the dark. She ignored the pain searing across her arm like a bucking stallion.

"What is that?" asked Peter. Marielle held out the torch. An altar. Made of bones. And black ice. _No,_ Marielle looked closer, _it's blood._ There was no one else here. The bones were Wil's. Peter was a resourceful boy, he took after his father. But they were leagues from town. There was no way. And when he froze, she bet the dark would be the first one to find him. There was no way out. "You want my soul?" asked Marielle. There was no one to find them, but at lest she could keep her soul, and guide her children in the afterlife. "Come take it."

 _Very well,_ said the darkness. Her ruined husband stepped into the moonlight.

Marielle felt her muscles strain as the dark approached. Part of her brain, an ancient part, pulled her entire body taught against her will. An ancient part of her that was hardwired to fear this thing. Marielle screamed and swung the torch. It hit the form that was once her husband, and broke apart. Embers blew into her face, singing her skin and making her eyes water. The dark laughed again. Why didn't it just take the fire from her? The fire couldn't hurt it. But...

Marielle touched the torch to hem of her ripped dress. "Come here, Peter," she held her son and buried his head in her shoulder.

No! said the vacant one.

Marielle smiled. _I can't beat you, but i'll be damned if you get our souls,_ she thought as the flames jumped across her dress.

 _Thrum._ A flash of gold.

The arrow hit the tree behind Marielle with a thunk. It was buried so deep it came out the other side. The arrowhead flashed gold in the moonlight.  _Thrum._  The second arrow hit her dead husband in the shoulder, sending him crashing into the altar. "Stop," said a voice. _Someone is here, someone has come,_ she thought. Marielle fell to her knees, and rubbed her dress in the snow, putting out the fire.

A man in golden armor stood in the dying fire. Embers swirled around him like demonic fireflies. His ears, Marielle noticed, were pinned upwards. Like royalty. Not downward the way elf nears pointed naturally. Those with means could afford useless procedures. But there was something else. He felt... the same as the creature in the dark. It felt less like a hunter fighting a bear to save you, and more like a wolf fighting the bear to decide who gets to eat. 

 _Sleeper. Begone! I have claimed them, you are too late,_ said the dark.

The sleeper held a long golden sword with a black iron hilt.

"Then I claim you," he said, and lunged.

*   *   * 

The Darksleepers formed when the shadows decided they weren't content to lay across the floor and hide in the corners any longer. When they started to fight back. When they waged war. The only thing that could beat the dark was the dark. So, the king drafted young men and women and sent them into the vacantlands. Few returned. But those that could could wield such power. Ambrose refused. Refused to listen to the shadow inside his head. He had remarkable strength and endurance simply by having such dark power inside him. He would not give up control. Never.

Ambrose's golden sword stuck Wil Blackthorn through the heart. The Darksleeper could feel Wil's breath on his face as the shadow inside the darkness inside growled. Ambrose drew his sword back and the blacksmith's body fell off of the creature of darkness like a loose apron. The blacksmith's wife rushed over to him. The man was still alive, somehow, but only for a moment. "Mary," was all he said. And then he was gone.

Ambrose and the vacant one paced around the ruined fire. It resembled a goat in some ways. One that had been butchered, dipped in honey, and then thrown into the dirt.Its wiry black hair was wet and sticky, and the smell of decay was overwhelming. It was shaved in places, and it's sinewy muscles flexed over one another like writhing snakes. " _You were weak to let this human claim you. You used to be a king, where is your pride?"_ The vacant spoke out loud. It could not speak inside his head. That space was already occupied.

"Speak to me," said Ambrose, "I am the one with power."

 _You aren't strong enough,_ said the voice inside Ambrose. He gritted his teeth. He'd beaten the so called vacant king, beaten, and then submitted himself, and his soul. To gain power. The dark claimed Wil Blackthorn's soul, who's body laid before him like a discarded dinner jacket at a party. That would have been Ambrose's fate, if he had not set his own conditions first. But despite calling the shots, Ambrose could do nothing to stop the thing inside him from talking.  _Give me control,_ said the voice, _now._

"Shut up," said Ambrose. He swung at the vacant, which faded into mist. Sleepers allowed their souls to be tainted in order to save others from a worse fate. He could still save the woman and her son. But his sword was useless against the vacant unless it took a physical form. Granted, vacant could not hurt him, either. A stalemate. Something warm washed across his unarmed side. He looked down. A bone stuck out of his side, wedged between two golden plates. The pain waited patiently and only hit him when he saw it. The vacant looked up at him with its horizontal goat-eyes. It was smiling. When he swung his sword, it immediately turned back into mist.

 _"I will take your soul, and I will take take the crown from the king you have cowed, and I will be king of the dark!"_ The laughing was deafening.

 _You will die_ , said the voice inside Ambrose. _Give me control._

"No," Ambrose clenched his jaw. He pulled the bone out of his side with his off hand, and the wound immediately stopped bleeding. Dark tendrils began to stitch the flesh together. Darksleepers were very hard to kill. He didn't think this vacant one realized that, he didn't think this vacant one ever fought a Darksleeper. This vacant one attacked Ambrose as if he were just another blacksmith. As if normal wounds could kill him. Ambrose used his sword as a cane, and sensing weakness, the vacant took a physical form and attacked. 

 _"This is the end of the Ambrose the Great, felled by a blacksmiths bone."_ The vacant grabbed his sword hand with a thousand black tendrils. They were stringy and wet, like the dregs left on the floor of a bath house. The strands held his dominant hand down, pinning him to the ground. Dragging him down. The darkness whispered in his ear, " _with all the power of a king but not enough sense to use it."_

"I told you, I don't use it," said Ambrose as he rammed the blacksmiths bone into the heart of darkness, "I claim it."

A vacant could not turn into mist when a Darksleeper held it. Ambrose thrust deeper, feeling the thick strands of hair and gristle that held the vacant's physical form break. Once he hit the hallow at its core, it would be destroyed. " _Please, no!_ " it screamed.  _"Don't you want to know who sent me!?"_  

"I don't care," said Ambrose.

_"Don't you want to know who killed the king?!"_


	2. PART ONE

Cherry Cole’s hair was either dirty blonde or just blonde and dirty. "Stop fretting, or I'll get your ear," said the barber, jabbing his head forward with his thumb. Cherry tried to distract himself from the grandiose plans swirling around in his mind by watching his hair fall to the floor and cover dark stains that looked like blood. His barber was trained in dentistry, but worked primarily as a surgeon. So it probably was blood. Cherry couldn't stop himself from turning around to ask the man how he pulled out teeth. "The key is to twist," said the barber, "now sit still, god damn it."

"Arguing with me is like pulling teeth," said Cherry, "Jake has said that of me, and he is my best friend."

"Sounds like it. Here," said the barber, offering Cherry a tin mirror, "you're set."

"Quite fine," said Cherry, turning right and left, admiring himself. He buttoned up his vest and asked the man the time.

"You got a date?"

"In a way," said Cherry, handing the man a liberty coin, "I am going to rob Luther Gray."

The barber shook his head and swept away the fallen hair.

The stagecoach kicked up dust and the dark desires of every man west of the Brazos. Its contents were rumor and speculation, but everyone thought it must be good, if Luther Gray was hired on to protect it. Gray was a war hero turned bounty hunter turned company man, which in essence, was just a steadily employed bounty hunter. So even though Grady Peters swore on his mother's life that the coach contained a suit of pure gold armor not one soul in Special, Texas thought it was worth the risk to rob it. 

Except one.

Through his three-draw telescope Cherry Cole counted twelve Randall and Strong Company agents in the distance, swirling to-and-fro in the heat. The rider in the front sat upon a white horse that towered over all the others. Luther Gray.

“We’ll take them when they get into the gorge,” said Cherry, closing the telescope. He set their meeting place at the base of a small hill, giving his gang a good vantage point as well as cover among the trees and boulders. But it was not necessary, as only two others showed. Cherry's excitement was rapidly being replaced by desperation.

“This is foolishness,” said Jake Boot, taking the telescope from Cherry to look for himself. Jake had the typical build of a cowboy, lean, and as easy with a smile as with a frown. This was in stark contrast to Cherry, who Grace often said looked like dandy who tripped into a circus. Jake closed the telescope after barely a glance, and did not bother hide his contempt, "this is what you brought us all the way out here for?" he asked.

“This is our only option. There are no banks with which our reduced numbers can penetrate,” said Cherry.

“We have already robbed two banks! Yet here I stand, more the poorer for it." Jake's arms were crossed and he looked miserable leaning against the thin trunk of short-leaf pine, barely able to take cover under it's meager shade.

All told, Cherry once commanded a gang of eight men, cobbled together with the promise of easy money. But it had not been so easy. And now there were three.

Grace McCall sat on a large rock, carefully rolling a cigarette. Her long black Wellington boots disappeared under the frayed hem of her once white dress. “Well, technically one was attempted robbery,” she said, “the other was just vandalism to a farcical degree.”

Jake let out something which was half laugh, half grumble.

Their crew had acquired, by way of stealing, a crate of old dynamite that had been marked for destruction due to its age. It should have been enough to blow three bank vaults, and so Cherry rationed it as such. But the first explosion did not even peel the paint from the walls, much less pry open the vault, leading to a rather embarrassed retreat. Cherry overcompensated for the second robbery, using almost two thirds of the dynamite, and the vault in DuPont was cleanly destroyed, but so was all its contents, and half the bank itself.

Everyone blamed Cherry, and some of the gang were even ready to kill him for it. But after Jake knocked three teeth out of Eamon Trank's mouth for suggesting it, the defectors decided he wasn't worth the effort. Jake had never liked Trank, but Cherry suspected that some of the anger Jake unleashed upon the man had been marked for him. Cherry spent the days after in a stupor, lost, adding to his tab at the bar until he overheard men discussing Luther Gray and his treasure. He rushed out like a man possessed and tracked Jake and Grace, who agreed to meet on the condition that they were only to look at this stagecoach, and that if they said no, that would be the end of it. It was a start.

Cherry stood up to his full height, which only reached Jake’s shoulders. “Mistakes were made, I admit that. But here we are, and there they are,” he pointed to the wagon, “one good score and it will all have been worth it.”

“They’ve at least nine guns, Cherry, if not more,” said Grace, pinching her cigarette out and placing it in her breast pocket, “I don’t wish to be shot once and then eight times for mercy.”

“I’d be grateful for it,” said Jake, and this time the laugh that followed was almost all grumble.

Cherry's approach clearly wasn’t working, so he walked over to Jake, hat in hand, and tried his best to look apologetic. “I have taken your point to heart, friend. No need to put so much venom in to defend it,” he gripped Jake's shoulder, and searched in the shadow under his hat for his eyes, “we’re a team. For good and bad.”

"But why does it seem to only be for bad?"

“Everything is going to be alright, Jake.” Cherry met Jake's eye and tightened his grip on his shoulder.

“Why do we need you? You are a miserable shot, and a miserable--" Jake broke out of Cherry's grasp, "get off."

"Grace is the only one of us who can shoot, and you should know this, as you yourself shot our very own Roland," said Cherry defensively, "though on accident, I am sure," he added quickly, trying to ease Jakes temper.

“Just his finger. And If he had not fidgeted-- more his fault than mine,” said Jake, "it does not change the fact that you are a horrendous architect of our fortune. I would rather craft my own, and take one hundred percent of the profit," he stepped on a branch and leaned his weight on it until it snapped, "and have only myself to blame if I fail."

“I don’t know Jake’s heart," said Grace, "but I don’t intend to hang our failures all on you, Cherry.” Her dress faded into orange at the knee, as if it had been dip dyed by the rusty clay underfoot. She took the rifle from her shoulder and slung it over her dun mare, “but what I will not do is keep digging when we can clearly see we have shoveled out a pretty little grave for ourselves,” she tightened the strap and tested the saddle. She was ready to leave.

“What’s the sense in folding when you’ve already bet?” said Cherry desperately, watching in disbelief as Jake too began to pack his things. “We’ve got nothing else. Jake, don’t--’

“They have got Luther Gray. I don’t intend to cross him,” Jake offered his hand, and Cherry shook it, holding tight until Jake broke away, "goodbye Cherry."

"Jake--"

Cherry was scrambling to think of something to say when Jake turned around. Cherry's heart leapt, but immediately crashed into nothingness when he saw the canvas bag Jake was carrying. “Here,” said Jake, handing it to Cherry, “I don't want this.”

The skinny pines swayed like an angry cat's tail as a gust of wind came up over the plains. Cherry covered his eyes as the dust swirled around him. Jake and Grace were almost completely faded away into the horizon, and even though it stung, Cherry watched until they were gone.

He jumped on his horse, Pepper, taking care not to jostle the canvas bag Jake gave him. He opened it. Small beads of nitroglycerin shimmered like dew on the last three sticks of dynamite. Cherry smiled.


	3. Chapter 3

Luther Gray read the letter again. It was delivered to him by the sheriff in Special -- a gangly, pathetic man Gray was glad to see the back of. Luther despised those who pretended to be his equal because they were given a silver badge. If it could be looted from your corpse, it was in the end worthless. The only things worth a damn in this world were a strong will and a quick hand.

Someone called out a warning: two riders, southwest, barely specks in the distance. Guns were drawn and his men circled the coach, but Luther did not react. He could tell the riders were not moving toward them, but away, and urged his company onward. But he was glad for the warning, it meant his men were on guard. They were entering the gorge. Its high walls made it a perfect spot for an ambush, and they would need to be on high alert. The wagon wheels fell back into their steady creaking rhythm. Luther folded the letter and slipped it into his breast pocket, but his thoughts would not rest. He turned the words over in his mind line by line.

It began simply:

_'Luther, they are coming for you.'_


	4. Chapter 4

The river was all but dried up as Cherry Cole rode along its grave. A hundred feet of red sandstone, separated by layers of thin, bone-white shale, towered before him. The gorge opened into the valley suddenly, as if trimmed with a knife. Cherry was the only living creature for as far as the eye could see, and he could not help but feel inadequate.

It was a strange place to stage a heist. The coach would have a perfect defensive position, among the scattered boulders that littered the entrance. The very thing that endangered the wagon as it crept through the gorge, now would protect it. But that was exactly what Cherry was counting on. He sat as easily as he could in the saddle, but could not stop fidgeting with the bandana folded around his mouth and nose. Pepper was drifting toward a rather large patch of scrub grass by the side of the riverbed, hoping that Cherry would not notice. “There, now, just a bit longer,” he said, and gave her a pat. She pawed the ground to show her frustration. The Colt Dragoon lay heavy in Cherry's lap. He was a lousy shot, but if he ever did manage to hit something, the powerful Dragoon would make it count. He practiced drawing it, and felt mildly ridiculous. He had rifle training, from the army, but hated how the sparks flew into his face, how the ash burned his eyes and nose. Cherry lifted his bandana, his breath was getting caught and he felt like he could not breathe.

The wagon turned the trail that ran along the river through the gorge just as Cherry was clumsily spinning the gun around his finger. He fumbled it, caught it, and tried to compose himself before anyone could notice. The riders around the wagon called out an alarm, as he knew they would. They looked in every direction, expecting attack from all sides. Cherry didn't think they would shoot him on sight, but that was now a very real possibility. Pepper sat upright and her ears were flicking back and forth rapidly, as she watched the men in the distance. "Hey, now, we're alright," Cherry said, and hoped it was true,

Drops of sweat rolled through the layers of dirt on Cherry's face. He did not to bring a hat to the meeting in the hopes that Jake might notice his haircut. He hadn't.

Finally content no attack was coming, the coach began to creep forward. Cherry swore he could feel the air pressure drop, like before a hurricane, and he tightened his grip on the Dragoon to hide his shaking hands. Every available gun was trained on the unknown rider, but the coach did not stop. It was getting to close. Cherry yipped Pepper forward. The coach halted and Cherry could tell he was a breath away from being shot. "Good afternoon gentlemen!" he said. They were right where he wanted them. But, he now realized, he was also right where they wanted him.

“Move out of the way,” said a voice like obsidian glass ground to gravel. Luther Gray, riding a white horse Cherry thought must be at least seventeen hands high. The only sound was the nervous clatter of guns as the riders adjusted their aim, each positioned to a fatal shot. But Luther Gray did not raise his pistol, he did not even put his hand on the holster, yet he was more imposing than all his men, as if he were one with the brutal rock face behind him. “Or die,” he finished.

“I intend to, sir,” said Cherry. Pepper stepped back, she seemed to be just as intimidated with Gray as Cherry was. He urged her back into position. “That is not to say I mean to die. Naturally, I was referring to your foremost point regarding moving," Cherry found it hard to talk under the bandana, which he kept breathing in accidentally, choking himself. "Unfortunately I must rob you first.”

In a flash, Luther Gray drew his revolver. He took aim from the hip, like a true gunslinger, his left hand resting an inch above the hammer. Gunslingers usually had a frantic cat-eyed way about them. The most notorious were always on the lookout for someone who might shoot them in the back for bragging rights. They avoided eye contact, in an effort to dissuade challenge. But Gray was solid, composed, and did not take his eyes off Cherry for an instant. “With appreciation to your unequivocal firearm skills, you may not want to do that,” said Cherry, unable to keep a shake from his voice.

“What I wouldn't do is a short list.”

Cherry glanced to a boulder feet away from the coach. "I take your meaning plainly. But you are acting without a full picture of the situation," he flicked his eyes again, "so, I must insist."

Gray followed Cherry's eye, then scowled. Cherry couldn't help but smile.

“I will lay you out dead before you even touch the trigger,” said Gray.

Cherry shrugged, hoping it would give him an air of nonchalance that Gray might mistake for confidence. Cherry was still in the river bed while Gray was on the trail, which added an additional three feet to his already impressive stature.

Gray's men caught on, one by one, nudging each other and talking in harsh whispers. The ones closest crying out in alarm and drawing their horses away. Resting in the crevice of a large boulder barely four feet from the stagecoach were three sticks of dynamite.

“You're a better shot, mister, I do not doubt it, but that dynamite is old -- any impact, say if I only manage to hit the rock,” even at this distance, Cherry was not certain he could even hit the boulder, but Gray didn’t know that, "it will undoubtedly be enough to send it to its destruction."

One of the men stepped forward, rifle raised. “You want me to take this fool?” he asked.

“Calm yourself, Winslow,” said Gray. He was staring at the dynamite, the beads of twinkling silver. The muscles in Grays jaw tightened, as if he were chewing a piece of gamey meat. He turned back to Cherry, “there's nothing in this wagon you want, boy. We carry no capital, no gold," Gray slowly holstered his pistol, "I will offer you this chance to leave only once. If you do not take it, you will die."

Cherry’s heart sank to his feet. No gold? "I heard there was golden armor, Grady Peter's said--"

"You have been fed a banquet of lies," said Gray, "you are in a situation more dangerous than you can comprehend."

Thank God Jake and Grace weren’t here for this, Cherry thought. “Show me what cargo you do possess, then,” he said.

Gray did not speak, he just flicked his head and three men disappeared behind the coach. Gray had blinked maybe three times since they started talking, and as they stared each other down, Cherry found it impossible to stop.

Cherry wanted to crane his neck for a better angle, but he would be dead if his aim strayed from the dynamite for even a second. If it wasn’t gold, or bonds, there was the very real possibility that it was an object even more valuable. A prize he could hold up to Jake Boot and say, it was all worth it for this. The men came out from behind the wagon, dragging something, and Cherry couldn't resist the temptation to try and get a better look.

The man made no sound when he was thrown into the riverbed before Cherry. Long black hair, matted and tangled, obscured his face. His ears came to a very fine point at the end, like an arrow-head. The man was shirtless, bound, and raw where the rope had burned into him. Whoever had tied him had not wanted him to escape. Whoever had tied him clearly feared he might.

The man growled and Cherry felt the sun dim a shade. The rope groaned as the man strained against it, and he wondered if it might simply snap then and there. A tangle of hair fell across the man's brow like a tilted crown. Their eyes met and Cherry flushed red as his namesake.

 “Aren’t you just as pretty as a painted wagon--”

Cherry did not even realize at first that he had been shot. The report of Luther Grays revolver echoed through the gorge. It was quickly overwhelmed by the thunder of dynamite.


	5. Chapter 5

Luther Gray's father had been a drunk. And maybe he still was, but either way he was dead. He was nine when they dragged his fathers body from the creek. It was a simple death. While stumbling home drunk he slipped down a bank, got tired crawling back up, and fell asleep. The night had been cold.

Luther was not allowed to see the body, but he was still light enough that if he stepped carefully he would not creak the floorboards, so as his mother made arrangements downstairs, Luther snuck down the hallway to find death. He was not scared, if anything he was suspicious. The figure in his fathers bed was not a man. He touched his father's brow, and wondered if it was possible his father was replaced with a wax replica. This hard lifeless husk could not possibly have once been a living man.

For no reason other than a child's cruelty, Luther's cousins would tease him about his father, telling him he died in a ditch, like a dog. He fought them, bitterly, but the more vicious he was, the more they knew it hurt him. And so with each bloody nose he gave out he resented his father just a little bit more. Why was he fighting so hard for his fathers memory when the man did not even fight for his life? Falling asleep in the dirt and never waking up. Luther swore that when his time came, it would be spectacular and grand, and every night he dreamed of dying a hero. Then came the war. He saw sweaty, crawling, begging deaths, and pleading, crying, lingering deaths. Luther Gray learned there were a million ways to die without dignity, and only one way to keep it. His father had been right.

*

The shock of the dynamite rippled through the ground like a wave and Luther had the distinct feeling of being pulled under by a riptide. The force of the explosion pushed him clear off his saddle. Sadie immediately went into a frantic run, as rocks and chunks of wood rained down from the sky. Luther hit the ground and rolled, narrowly avoiding Sadie's hooves. He tried to stand, but the world seemed to be covered with a wax film, everything was slippery and blurry. A shape came toward him and he jumped aside just in time to dodge a stallion, running free, its rider hanging limp over the saddle. He stood up as the chaos of running men and horses, smoke and fire, swam into focus before him.

The coach was gone. It had evaporated. Wood splinters were scattered across the riverbed like a fallen volley of arrows. Some stuck out of corpses, others stuck out of living men.

Luther could not find any sign of his captive or the masked robber. They were gone.

The bodies of Red Tule, Sean McConnely and Kevin Dunlap were recovered from the wreckage. They never found Peter Raleigh, who was driving the coach. He had simply vanished, scattered to the wind like a handful of dust. Winslow Young miraculously survived taking a piece of iron railing through his face, but his pain was unbearable, and they could not move him.

"I heard 'em, sir, when I was lyin' there, couldn't do but nothin' else," Winslow's one eye searched frantically, as if the answer to his predicament lay just outside his vision. "I remember he said, 'my name is Cherry,' I could not make out the rest, but -- Cherry, like in the fruit, ain't that some kinda name?"

"Thank you, Mr. Young. Please try to relax," Luther looked at the pitiful figure splayed on the ground before him, with its ever growing halo of blood dark dirt, "you will back in our company just as soon as you recover," he said.

"That is awful reassuring, Mr. Gray, to be plain, I feel a degree of worry over my condition," Winslow took a deep breath, and shut his good eye, "write my brother, he's a doctor'n we don't get on but--"

Luther shot Winslow Young as he lay in the dirt.

"If you're going to die in a ditch, it's best not to know," he said, then turned away and never looked back.

 


	6. Chapter 6

Grace McCall laughed as the mockingbird pestered Jake Boot. He yelled and hissed then began waving his gun menacingly before Grace stopped him. "You will hit all the angels in heaven before you get that bird, and even sooner than that, me," said Grace, waving him down, but she did not stop laughing. Jake sat in a stony silence, humiliated, as his hat was knocked askew.

Leaving Texas was always part of Grace’s plan. California was inevitable, it did not matter that all the gold had already been panned up by thousands of men with a million broken dreams. It was an ocean of manufactured wonder that all the rivers and tributaries of the American soul fed into, omitting only the people who's wealth and lives it offered up as free.* No one dared doubt the new American religion with two words to its sermon:  _get rich_.

Grace was not immune to its allure, though she was not foolish enough to think she would find gold -- but there would be men who did, and she could take their money. Then she would move on, as she had always done. She didn't bother to own anything she couldn't pack on her horse. And Jake, well, he just didn't have anything. They had been riding north along the eastern edge of the Mescalero Ridge for hours now, with the endless desolation of the Staked Plains to their right. They would ride until they hit Cheyenne, then hitch a ride on the Union Pacific. It was almost the exact route Luther Gray took, but in reverse.

Jake looked out from under his hat to see if the mockingbird had finally let up. "Is it gone?" he asked.

“I wonder if you could train a bird to do that on command. It would be dead useful,” said Grace, she watched the gray and white bird disappear into the distance.

“I would argue with your definition of useful,” said Jake, adjusting his hat, “I am sure Cherry could conjure some hair-brained scheme involving a trained bird, but simply using something does not designate it as useful.”

“I suspect that’s the first time anyone has accused Cherry of having saintlike qualities,” said Grace.

“I did not say he was a saint,” said Jake, sharply. They crossed a stream, and Jake stopped to let his horse drink. “Beside, what saint ever trained a bird?”

Grace turned in her saddle and shouted after him, “St. Francis.”

“You’re just whistling. You know full well he spoke the gospel to those birds,” said Jake, clipping his horse to catch up, “he did not train them.”

“I have not actually ever been inside a church,” said Grace, "so I do not know."

"Then how do you know St. Francis?" asked Jake. A strange line of trees grew along the road, the kind often set before a ranch house as protection against the wind built up on the grasslands. But there was no house, and Grace wondered whether it had been destroyed, or if it had even been built at all.

“A priest used to come around and visit my family, to bring us religion I imagine," said Grace, "It did not take, but we all liked him, me most of all. I always asked him to show us his drawings, which he had done on a trip to Italy for some priestly training.” Grace pulled her now diminutive cigarette from her breast pocket. “Among his sketches was a particular charcoal reproduction of a sculpture, which I do believe was Jesus, and by god he cut the finest figure I had ever seen. Shirtless and with an enviable musculature, his eyes were kind and inviting. It made quite a mark on me in my young age, and rather spoiled me for all men, after,”

Jake did not know whether to blush or scowl, so he did both. “Are you telling me you were sweet on Jesus?”

“No one forced the priest to render him so, or the sculptor to sculpt him so,” said Grace, her match flaring along with her grin.

“You are not half as clever as Cherry, and he is not half clever, himself,” said Jake, shaking his head, but Grace’s laugh was infectious and he had to expend considerable effort not to smile, “you should not be so quick to laugh, one will think you are not a serious person.”

“If you're serious they'll call you a spinster, if you're angry they'll call you a witch, they have about a thousand words for whatever you want to be that they would rather you weren't. Why bother?”

“I don't pretend to know your circumstance. But I never felt I could afford to be anything else,” said Jake.

The steady sound of hoofbeats marked the time, making it all the more obvious how long it had been since someone last spoke. “I am sorry for your fortunes at the ranch,” said Grace, “that was a nasty business.”

“I went along with Cherry on my own free will," Jake sucked in breath through his teeth, "after we were fired, well, I chose to rob those banks. Because I am the imbecile. I did not leave him, despite the fact that he almost led me to ruin,” his throat tightened, and his voice became husky and thick, “despite the fact he did ruin me.”

"Cherry never meant to do harm, but somehow it seems to follow him."

"Meaning to and doing so have as little to do with each other as a mockingbird does with gravity," said Jake.

“Can I ask you something?"

"Is it going to upset me? If so, I would rather not."

"Why are you coming along with me?" asked Grace,

"Word will get around about me, about what happened with me and Cherry at Bar Arrow ranch. No one will hire me," said Jake, "and if anyone puts it together that Cherry orchestrated those heists, I would rather be away. Simply, I have nowhere else to be."

"And if you did?"

"If your question is: if I were a different person, would I act differently? Then the answer is yes."

"Have it your way, then," said Grace, "I am not Cherry, and I will not continue a conversation that is not wanted."

"Fine! I would have been perfectly content to live the rest of my life in Special, working the Bar Arrow," said Jake, "does that satisfy you?"

"I just wonder why you never got some different country under your feet! I do not understand a man who does not feel stagnant. California will be good for our fortunes, and besides, it can hardly be worse" said Grace, and Jake grumbled, "but here's my point: make your own way, Jake, do not feel impelled to stay with me. But, for what it's worth," the wind blew Grace's long brown hair across her face, and she pinned it behind her ear, "I am glad to have you along."

"Oh," said Jake, "well-"

Seven riders bulged into the road before them. Jake froze, then reached for his gun. “We will be dead if you raise that,” said Grace, and Jake dropped his hand.

“I think they mean to kill us,” he said.

“What someone means to do and what they will, are very different,” Grace tossed the last bit of her cigarette into the dirt, “you’re a good man, Jake, so do not take this disparagingly, but you have the social grace of a badger stuck on barbed wire. Let me handle this.”

The riders clambered past in a thunderous show of force. Grace noticed bandaged faces, arms in slings, they were fresh from battle, one that had not been in their favor. The dust the riders kicked up rolled in behind them like a storm. It blocked out the sun and gave everything a reddish ghost-like appearance. Grace yelled into the void, “If you're aiming to rob us, we don't have much, just have our saddles.”

“Mines on loan,” said Jake, under his breath so only she could hear.

“We are not pilferers, though we seek one,” said a voice through the dust.

A man on a giant white horse pulled to a stop before Grace. His coat was tattered and his hair stuck to his forehead in a sweaty mass. He was splattered in blood, but none of it seem to be his. His horse had a white, wild eye look, as if it might buck at any moment. It was clear to Grace it was only being put to heel through its riders sheer force of will.

“I'm looking for a man named Cherry,” said Luther Gray.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *An estimated 100,000 Native Americans died during the first two years of the Gold Rush alone; by 1873, only 30,000 indigenous people remained of around 150,000. California spent a total of about $1.7 million—a staggering sum in its day—to murder up to 16,000 people. In just 20 years, 80 percent of California’s Native Americans were killed. Furthermore, this does not acknowledge the state sponsored policy of enslaving tens of thousands of Native Americans and that in California's first session of the state legislature, officials gave white settlers the right to take custody of Native American children. (Source: https://www.history.com/news/californias-little-known-genocide )
> 
> For a more comprehensive reading: https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300181364/american-genocide


	7. Chapter 7

Cherry Cole limped out of the shadows and into the moonlight, pale, gunshot and smiling. Still bound, the sharp-eared stranger watched as Cherry struggled to carry an armload of wood from the tree-line and into the clearing. "You're still here?" Cherry asked in mock surprise, "I'm going to think you're sweet on me."

The stranger leveled Cherry with a dispassionate glare, and it was Cherry who blushed first. "What am I to you?" the stranger asked, his voice soft and cold, like a red winter sky. "Why have you taken me?"

"You speak in such a pretty way, are you English?" asked Cherry. The stranger did not respond, he just opened and closed his hands, his forearm muscles flexing. The man's vulnerability, or the fact that he had no shame it, made Cherry feel like the one exposed. Cherry tried to busy himself by kicking away the tin cans and broken bottles that littered the clearing, but he was in too much pain and quickly gave up. The campsite was nestled in a crevice between solid rock plateaus, which made tracking difficult. It was used by trappers, hunters and anyone who might want to spend a night outside of societies watch, Cherry had stayed here many times.

"Is it not obvious?" Cherry said suddenly, as if it was forced out of him, "you are a testament to my successful heist." He leaned the branches he’d gathered over a log, and then filled the gap with pine needles. "Life's vicissitudes have worn on me," a groan escaped him as he bent over, his left hand glued to his side, "too often for the worse." His legs wobbled and he fell to his knees. Slowly, he regained his breath, then crawled with one elbow to his saddle bag. His speech was muffled as he pulled the match out of its small tin case with his teeth, and lit it with a flick of the thumb, “but stranger, you are the proof that I have persevered, evidence that everything does not always have to go bad.” He crawled back to the fire and spit the match into kindling. He missed. Cherry scrambled, “damn my eyes--” he said, picking up the match "--ah!" and flicked it into the kindling where it caught fire.

“You have been dealt a fatal blow,” said the stranger.

“This?” said Cherry, kissing his fingertip, “I’ll survive.”

Deep unease washed over Cherry each time the stranger did not react to his jest. Cherry had a natural talent for generating a retort from those around him. He never once failed to get a rise out of Jake, and even Luther Gray, with all his grave stoicism, could not resist. Silences were torture to  
Cherry, he would rather a torrent of anger than nothing. If could not charm, then he would antagonize, because if they were not thinking of him, then he might as well not exist.

“Oh, that,” Cherry unbuttoned his vest and pulled up his shirt. The mark of the bullet was black and violent and he did not like to look at it. “I guess I ought to do something for it.” Cherry crawled back to his bag and pulled out a dark bottle and a linen shirt. "It knocked the wind out of me, the bullet, I mean," his voice was strained, "I thought somehow one of Gray’s men had got behind me and punched me. What a silly notion!” He crawled back to the stranger, and propped himself up next to him. The man felt cool, despite the sweltering august night. “Afterward, all I felt was a spreading numbness. It did not hurt, exactly. I didn’t think then that--” Cherry stopped, uncomfortable with where that thought was leading, “--It was only after I lifted you onto Pepper that my body truly awoke to the fact that it had been shot." Cherry steeled himself as he poured the brandy over his wound, "it felt as though a hot iron poker was being pushed out of me, from the inside.” Cherry's hands were shaking so violently he could not get the stopper back in the bottle. He turned to the stranger and smiled, "but it is nothing so long as I have you."

"But for how long will you have me?" asked the stranger.

“My dying,” he said through gritted teeth as a fresh stream of blood dissolved into the brandy like watercolor, “--Is not a settled matter.”

“Will you untie me? Because if you should die, it will be hours of uncomfortable work for me to free myself,” asked the stranger, "and if you do not, I want to know what is next."

“It is really not as bad as you make out,” Cherry pressed the cotton shirt to his wound and winced. He was no longer just pale, the whiteness started taking on dark shadows under his eyes and cheeks. He had not answered the stranger’s question and he knew that was why the stranger did not respond. And while he did know the answer, he was not ready to admit it. Cherry fell over himself to fill the silence, “I now believe Gray shot me in the belly on purpose, to incapacitate me so I might be brought to some more brutal justice, later,” Cherry spit blood, though it did not have enough force to clear his own body and landed on his thigh. “It would be some consolation to me if it was the report of Gray’s own shot which set off the dynamite. I didn't even fire, but apparently that had not been a requirement for ignition. It was more delicate than I suspected, and I am terrified in retrospect for ever having handled it. I will never tell Jake, that is for certain, for he was the one who carried it primarily, not trusting me to hold it.”

Cherry looked into the man's eyes, it was like looking down a well, looking for the faintest reflection in the black water below. "Say, why don't you tell me your name?" asked Cherry.

The stranger said nothing.

"I do not know what is next," said Cherry, his voice breaking, "why does there always have to be a next, if the now is good?" Cherry closed his eyes, his whole body was shaking now. “My only reward could not have been Gray’s bullet,” pain hit him like a hailstorm, and when it ebbed he felt as though it took a part of him with it. The spasm of pain went on for what felt like hours, but it was barely a minute. The sound of his suffering was pitiful, a high-pitched whine that escaped him when he was overcome. Cherry hoped he would survive, if for no other reason than to give himself the chance to die again with more dignity.

Still, the stranger said nothing.

“I will not set you free," said Cherry finally, "because if I do, you will leave." The pain was like the squeal of a locomotive, a metallic wail that cut so sharp you could feel it in your teeth, "and I do not want to be alone.” Cherry felt himself slip, he did not know to where.

"My name is Ambrose of Willowden, son of Ambriar," said the stranger.

_Amber_ , thought Cherry, and then he didn't think anything at all.

 


	8. Chapter 8

The jail in Special was a squat brick structure with two cells. Special was small, and didn't have a courthouse, so any real outlaws or criminals were only detained, and then brought to the judge in Oneida. One cell was full beyond capacity, filled with drunken, sweaty men, who barely had enough room the stand and the other which contained only a single occupant: Grace McCall. She sat on the dirt floor in the dark, leaning against the brick wall. Moonlight was scattered across the ground before her by the branches of the dying ash outside. She looked out the window and saw a dash of blue on the horizon. Daylight would break soon.

Grace had never much liked the town of Special. There were too few families and too many single men. Owen Randall and Special Strong were the first to explore the rivers and hills in the area. The last anyone heard of them they were failed prospectors who left California with their tails between their legs, who ran out of money on their way back to the east coat. So when they came back to California a year later as rich as kings, the tale of their fortune spread like wildfire. The trading and banking empire they built off of their lucky break at the Texas border added needed fuel to the waning gold rush fever. Special was a town conceived in rumor and borne of greed. _Gold in the Pecos! Gold in the Canadian River!_ Word spread across the west like a dust storm, tall as a mountain but with no substance. The first to arrive after Randall and Strong took one look at the gold deposits in the sandstone cliffs and broke down in tears. Towns were built overnight. But the largest nugget recovered was less than a quarter inch wide, and in six months the towns were abandoned. Everyone thought Randall and Strong must have mined it all up, but how two men managed to do that, no one knew. The town of Special alone remained, managing to survive off of travelers coming up and down from the gulf to California and the cattle drivers that were cementing the routes between Galviston and Cheyenne. Special was the last stop for an outfit to fill a chuck wagon before crossing the great grass desert, the last chance to have a drink and play cards. It was originally called Sawmill, but as no sawmill was ever built people took to calling it Special. Partly after the man who's fame inspired it, and partly because as the only town to survive a false gold rush, it was special.

Grace met Jake’s eye and he stared back at her through a tangled mass of drunken men. His mouth was tight with anger as he was jostled this way and that by the men moving around the tightly packed cell. Try as she might, Grace could not help but smile. It was not Jake’s predicament that amused her, but the grim stoicism with which he bared it. Despite appearances, Jake was not a hard man. He was serious, yes, as horse-wise men tended to be, carrying a strength that was equal parts firm and gentle. A cowboy needed to know the difference between a cruel kick and the gentle nudge of the spur. Needed to understand cruelty in order to avoid it. Which was not dissimilar from a cruel man, who needed to understand cruelty in order to inflict it. But there was a difference. Grace had men who could look straight into the sun and never have it reflect in their eyes.

“If you have any consideration for my predicament you will try to not look so... comfortable,” Jake whispered, despite the fact that every man cramped in his cell could hear every word.

“What kind of person would I be if I took for granted what you are deprived?” said Grace, who leaned back on the wooden cot.

“We are both likely to be deprived of our lives if you do not show contrition.”

Luther Gray and his posse had driven them into Special around dusk. It had been a lonely ride, but Grace spent it looking at the men who captured them, and watching the sun dip below the clouds. There was no light in Luther Gray's eyes when he turned to look at her, only the still of the approaching night.

“The cold truth is,” said Grace,  “if these men aim to kill us, they will. All we can do is wait until all the cards are on the table, then play the best hand we got.”

Jake was so stricken with horror he took a step back and bounced off a large man with a black beard. He apologized, then grabbed the bars with both hands, his face pressed between them. “Tell me you are not thinking to tell them we know Cherry,” he said, barely even bothering to whisper.

"Cherry?" asked an old man sitting on the floor next to Jake. Grace ignored him.

“If we deny it, they will not even think twice about killing us,” said Grace, “we are fastened to a runaway train, Jake, the sooner you understand that, the better. We can only jump once. Our best plan is not to have one.”

“That ain't no plan, ma’am,” said a man leaning on the bars that shared her cell, “a plan cain’t be nothin’" He was hidden in shadow, but even so she could tell his eyes were bloodshot and his shirt was covered in sick.

“It can, too,” said Grace. She laid down in a patch of silver moonlight.

“He’s right, no plan is no plan,” said another man Grace could not even see, hidden by men and shadow, his voice was reedy and thin.

“Grace, listen to me,” said Jake, “we tell them nothing, we deny everything. They have nothing on us--”

But Grace wasn't listening. “You do not disprove me,” she said, stubbornly, "my plan is what I say it is."

“A plan needs at least two parts,” argued the red-eyed man.

Grace sat up. “Let me ask you this, do you plan to wake up tomorrow?” asked Grace, "though if I were you I might wish I didn't"

Jake began to interject but the red-eyed man pushed him aside. He grabbed the bars with thick, dirty hands and spit at her through brown teeth, "watch your tongue, now."

"I plan on waking up," said the old man, his voice high and reedy, "what of it?" The old man was well dressed and well groomed, at least compared to his fellow prisoners. He had a long curled moustache, and the hair that remained on his head was so thick with pomade it looked like it was made of wax.

“Well, that’s only one thing you aim to do, yet it still a plan,” said Grace, with a note of finality. The patch of moonlight before her whittled down to a razor’s edge as clouds rolled over the sky.

“She’s changing the rules!” said Red Eye, his voice slurred with drink.

“Not having a plan is a plan!” said Grace, genuinely annoyed now.

“McCall!” shouted Jake, “this is not just your life on the line!”

“Besides, the first part is going to sleep, the second part is waking up,” said the well dressed old man, “it still has two parts. By her logic, anythin’ can be a plan, one's the thing your doing now, the next what you’re aimin’ for.” He spit again. "Just like a woman to change what she say."

"McCall?" Said Red Eye, looking at Grace as though he hadn't been staring her down for the last five minutes. "Your name is Grace McCall?"

“I changed nothing!” Grace yelled at the old man, then, calming herself, she turned to Jake, “you can not lie to save your life, Jake, so why do you expect lying to save you?” she walked over and put her hand on his. “Trust me, I am not Cherry.”

 

“Our sister is right. The Lord will provide, if we speak our sins to him, full of heart--” spoke another voice from the shadow.

Grace could tell Jake was at his wit's end, his eyebrows were so furrowed they might as well be touching. He was shouting now, trying to get over the din of the several simultaneous conversations. “I know you are not Cherry,” said Jake, “but I swear, tell Gray and he will never let us--”

“People keep telling me what I will not do,“ said Luther Gray, who pushed through the door to step in front of the two cells. He wore black leather boots, brown pants, a silver belt and a black duster, all covered in equal parts dust and blood. “When they should be more concerned about what I will.” His Remington No. 3 revolver flashed molten gold on his hip as it caught the lantern light. His eyes stayed dark.


	9. Chapter 9

 

Elsie Meyer’s father told her she was delivered into this world by God, but she never believed him until the day she found the angel.

"Your mother was carried off to heaven while you were still inside her, and Jesus sent you on to me," he told her, again and again until the story became as smooth and soft as worn leather, "he left you behind for a reason, to be the instrument of His plan.”

“To do what?”

“You must pray, and listen until He tells you."

And so Elsie did. She was an obedient daughter, helping to collect eggs as soon as she could walk. By five she was milking cows and shearing sheep, and by six she was covered in dirt and sweat, helping her father plow the field. Each year the corn rose up, she rose up just a little more to meet it. She worked in the snow, the rain, and under the baking sun. Elsie put her ear to the earth and listened for Him.

Most of what she heard was her father. He spoke of men who lived thousands of years ago, in Jerusalem and Nazareth and all the other places Elsie would never see. Places where God bore men and men became God. He talked all day, his voice never tiring. Elsie tried to listen attentively and imagine these fantastic places in her mind, but all the places ended up looking like the farm, and all the men looked like her father.

James Meyer was insistent his daughter learn her letters, so after the sun set they sat by firelight and studied, with only four books to their library. The first was a shipping ledger, which taught her math. Her father made her balance each account. Once she learned addition and subtraction, her father set her to tracking the sale of apples. It was relatively easy. But other accounts involved tariffs and obscure laws involved interest and taxes. She hated that book. The second was a dictionary, which taught her language. It was better than the ledger, but it made for very dry reading. Most of the words even her father did not know, and she struggled to figure out how they were meant to be pronounced. The third was a book of poetry her father said almost nothing about, except that it was her mothers.

Under her father's watchful eye she read each book a hundred times, and quickly a favorite emerged. Her mother’s book. It was short, a scant eighty pages next to the ledgers five hundred and the dictionary’s thousand. But it left more of an impression than anything else, the words dancing around her mind for days, after the numbers and words of her other books faded away.

 

_Nothing is further away_

_than a name forgotten_

_searched for at edge of tongue_

_but never found_

 

"What does it mean?" she asked, but her father only grimaced before quickly changing the subject. It wasn't until much later that it occurred to her: _my father cannot read_. For all his verbosity, he struggled to understand basic sentences. He taught her numbers and words but after that, nothing. He didn’t even know how to spell half the words he said. When she pressed him about it, he said it was to challenge her. She loved him enough to let him think she believed him.

The fourth book was bound in black leather, worn through at the binding. The pages were a brittle yellow and refused to bend. She had to be careful or she might accidentally rip them. But sometimes, because of the frustratingly strange and unwieldy exotic language they contained, that was all she wanted to do. Her father guarded the book jealously as they worked to translate it. It was made difficult by her father who withheld its contents, and instead asking her to translate random words, never enough to comprehend. Out of all the work she did on the farm, translating was easily the hardest. Elsie only gathered it was a history of a land very far away, and that all the events happened a long time ago.

For the words that were too secretive even for her, James Meyer worked alone. His progress was slow, and he often made none at all. When curiosity got the better of her and she cracked open the book, her father walked in on her translating what he could not and exploded with fury. Spittle flew off of his lips as he stuttered to find words to scold her. The next week, a small safe appeared in the barn, and the books were all locked away. Even her mother's book.

"Why is it so secret?” she asked “Why don't you teach it to me? I can help you."

"It is the language of sin, and it comes from an evil place."

"Then why are we translating it?"

"Because God's word exists in every language."

 

Elsie grew tall. By her eleventh year, she did not even have to look up to meet her father's eye. The one room shack groaned against every inch she grew. The hours spent at work, the hours translating, bled into one another. She felt lost, even though she was in the only place she had ever known.

Her only respite was hunting, and what a thrill it was when the .58 Springfield bucked in her arms. She measured the time between hunts by the color of her bruises. Her father hunted the larger game; mule deer, pronghorns, bighorn sheep and feral hogs, often leaving for days and weeks at a time. Everything smaller was left for Elsie to shoot, clean and cook. But even hunting lost its varnish as the walls of the shack crowded in around her. The hills seemed to shrink. Each varmint she shot was indistinguishable from the one she shot last week. The game trail was as familiar and over-trod as her fathers story. When it led to the edge of the grasslands, she stood with two doves tied to her belt and fired once into the horizon in the hope that maybe some part of her might escape.

James Meyer’s presence was stifling, but when he was gone Elsie felt more alone than she thought was possible. The Meyer’s had no neighbors. No other family. And even though it was only a two day ride away, Special might as well have bordered Jerusalem. In the unlikely event that a man came by seeking to sell his wares or labor, James Meyer stood before the shack, .58 in hand, and stared at the stranger until they left. Elsie was told to hide in the barn, and watched the only other people she might see in years leave down the road she could not. Once, while on a hunting trip with her father, Elsie glimpsed trails of smoke rising over the trees.

"Is that coming from Special?" she asked.

"Don't concern yourself with that, it makes no matter, it might as well be Gomorrah," her father said, "it will burn the same."

Elsie watched the blue smoke as it faded into the sky and disappeared. She could almost smell it.

"I have been there," she thought, "I was born there."

 

The day after her mother died, James Meyer loaded her and everything he owned into a wagon and left. He searched for two weeks for a place to settle, and came across a town founded and abandoned during the fool's gold rush. The land that was once cleared was now overgrown with brush. The foundation stones for a church were laid, and a single well was dug. Only a wooden shack remained, half collapsed and rotting. “Like Mary in Nazareth, God has delivered us shelter,” her father told her, though she was too young to understand. He had no livestock, no money, only the belief that God would provide.

And He did. Elsie's earliest memory was a miracle. She woke up and went outside to make water, but when she walked behind the shack, she heard something. A strange voice in the dark. _Could it be Him?_ she wondered. She walked toward the barn cautiously, barefoot in the mud. The door was cracked, and she slowly opened it. Ten black eyes stared up at her. She ran, then slipped and went headfirst into a puddle. She looked up to see her father standing above her. "Sheep!" she screamed. "There's sheep in the barn!"

“There you were, my child of God, standing before me wet in the mud, do you know what you said to me?”

“Yes, father.”

“You said, ‘It’s a miracle!’ And what did I tell you?”

“God answers the prayers of his children if they listen to His word,” she recited. After her father went back to sleep, Elsie snuck into the barn and pressed her ear against the matted wool of the lamb. She heard nothing.

That was not the last night they would find their barn blessed by God. When Elsie was six, she found a mule. Two goats a month later. Chickens trickled in steadily over the years. And when they seemed to run low on supplies, bullets and gunpowder appeared. When tools broke, new ones took their place. On her father’s birthday Elsie opened the barn doors to find a case of brandy, a new work shirt with matching pants, and a fawn calf she'd soon name Crouton. God was truly looking out for her.

 _No. It is father who is blessed,_ she thought, _not me. Never me._ She still had to lengthen her skirts and sleeves with fabric she cut from a flour sack. She still watched out for stray nails because of the holes in the soles of her shoes the size of dollar pieces. _Not me._

And then Elsie Meyer found an angel and knew that she was wrong.

  * * * 

The sun hid behind gunmetal clouds. Even though she could not see the sun, Elsie could feel it, so she stared into the bright dim for as long as she could stand. When she closed her eyes, there it was. The sun. A circle of green and yellow, red and white.  When she opened her eyes the image rested like a halo atop Crouton, her cow, as he raised his head to look at her. Then it shot across the grass, blooming every flower as it went and with it, she ran. When she looked down the well, into the wet damp nothing, it lit up the darkness. But only for her.

There was no one else.

Her father had gone off hunting in the valley beyond the hills, near Special. She got done with chores in half the time without him around to lecture her. She was not allowed to touch the books when he was gone, so her nights were spent in the barn, petting the animals. The farm was peaceful and still without him, but it also felt empty.

Three days after her father left on his hunt, the wrath of God rolled in from the hills and over the farm. The thunder was deafening, and Elsie was knocked to the ground when a panicked sheep took her legs out from under her. She sought refuge in the barn with the animals, all of them huddled together, terrified. Then, as her heartbeat slowed, she realized: Thatwas _Him. He had finally spoken._

Crouton was sure footed over the plateau, his tail lashing with excitement, swinging their bag of supplies to and fro. James Meyer said that Crouton was more clever than any cow had the right to be, and he did not mean that as a compliment. He was always bitter about Crouton, who was intended to be his birthday dinner, before Elsie refused. When the calf nudged her with his wet nose as she woke him up from sleeping in the field, she knew she found a best friend. And so when her father came to the barn with the .58 Special in hand Elsie stood in his way. It was the first time and last time she ever dared to defy her father.

“You will not hurt him.”

Her father stared into her eyes, and saw fire. He left without a word.

That night Elsie slept with Crouton in the barn, on the straw, and despite the bitter spring frost outside she was as warm as if she were next to a hearth. She named him Crouton, a word she picked out of her mothers book.

She led Crouton along the ridge, rising higher and higher over the grasslands below. Elsie carried the kid Poppy, who her father had named, in one arm. The little white goat bleated continuously. In her other she held a rope, circled loosely around Croutons neck. Together they walked into a world Elsie had never seen. Beyond the farm. The first time Elsie left to meet Him, she barely made it past the corn field before doubling back. She was too scared to go alone.

The second time, Elsie decided to climb to the highest point she could see, up onto the plateau that bordered the grasslands where she was sure he would give her another sign. It was higher and further than she ever went before, but she was determined not to look back. Crouton was full of vigor, and enjoyed the trek, often shaking his head if she slowed the pace. Poppy bleated continuously.

They made slow progress over the boulders, across the crevices and through the ravines. Crouton lost his pep once the sun fell behind the hills, though Poppy never lost his energy for bleating. They laid together on a bed of needles beneath a giant dying pine tree. Elsie looked up at the stars and wondered how far do you have to go until they change.

Then she heard Him.

He was speaking in another language. But she recognized a few of the words. It was the language from her father's worn black book.

Elsie left Poppy and Crouton, and kept to the shadows as she crept. The pine needles dug into her feet through the holes in her shoes, but for once she was glad of it for the stealth it provided. She drifted to the edge of a small clearing, and looked into the light of a dying fire. A man lay sleeping on the ground, and next to him was the most magnificent man Elsie had ever seen. An angel.

Elsie knew this was the moment she waited for her entire life, but she could not bring herself to step forward. The man was fair, with hair as dark as unconsciousness. His ears were strange, they were long, and came to a sharp point at the end. There was nothing in her fathers stories about _that_. His eyes were as black as his hair, and it seemed as though there was no white to them. Elsie could tell the angel would tower above both her and her father when he stood. She watched until the firelight was burned into her vision and still could not move.

Suddenly, the man balled his fists and strained against the ropes. The ropes were thicker than any they had on the farm, but he flexed so hard Elsie was sure the ropes would break. They did not. He stopped just as suddenly and stared up at the stars, still as stone. Every so often he would try again, and stop just as suddenly, seemingly without frustration or disappointment.

Elsie tried to step into the light but her body was frozen. _I was chosen for this,_ she thought as tears burned her eyes. Then she heard a darker voice inside her: _If I was truly chosen, wouldn’t I be able to move?_ She hated that voice, but could not ignore it. It was right. She could not do this alone.

Holding the small white goat in her arms Elsie Meyer stepped into the firelight.

“You are an angel,” she said to the man.

“No,” he said, “I am their shadow.”


	10. Chapter 10

Cherry Cole laid in the dirt and decided he would start boasting about having never broken a bone. Being gut shot isn't a story Cherry much wanted to tell, and it ruined his streak. The fact that he got through two Comanche raids without being shot was the only thing the army gave him that was worth a damn. It was the foundation he used to spin a yarn so enthralling that men bought him a drinks just to hear the end of it. Which was fortunate because Cherry rarely had money for drinks. It wasn't the truth, of course, but if anyone knew what actually happened they would sooner buy a drink for the man who shot him. He could continue to tell the story as he had, and just omit the fact that eventually someone did manage to shoot him. Getting men so interested in unbroken bones seemed a risky bet. Though, sprinkled in a few sticks of old dynamite, a heist, an explosion. _Well, I might have something there_ , he thought.

Pain seized Cherry across the abdomen when he coughed. His body crumpled in on itself involuntarily, which only caused more pain. Whenever Cherry tried to keep his coughing at bay, he started to feel like he might drown. Strangely, he was also thirsty. So god damn thirsty. If he untied the stranger, he could get him water. But Cherry knew the man would only leave.

Embers lifted into the air and drifted away. Cherry, too, drifted, his strength waning as the fire burned down. His bleeding slowed, but never stopped. The bound man sat next to him, staring at the stars. They had not spoken in hours.  _What had he said his name was? Something English?_  Cherry coughed again, and a drop of blood landed on the man's face. “Sorry about that, Amber,” his voice was so quiet even the boldest liar wouldn't call it a whisper. Pepper wandered over to Cherry's side, and touched her lips to his head and groomed him. At least she would not leave him. Pepper looked up, her ears flicked back. "What is it?" Cherry asked in a voice that was mostly breath, "what do you see?" 

A young girl in a tattered dress stepped into the light. The glow of the coals drenched her in a red so vibrant she looked to be covered in blood. She held a white goat and led a a brown spotted calf. “Or’gele ae-eo,” she said, in a voice as soft as the crackling embers.

“Ni,” said Amber, in the same language the girl spoke, “Eo’gele-en aduw.” Cherry looked back at Amber, astonished. The words were too round, too airy.

“Jesus Christ,” said Cherry, finding his voice, “I’m going mad.” His words broke through the dark like a gunshot.

“Jesus Christ!’ the girl shouted, turning to Cherry. "On'Jesus ae-nawan-hu?" She stared at Cherry expectantly, waiting for an answer.

“Can't say I know much about any of that” said Cherry. The girl stared at him, confused. She clearly didn’t understand anything he said, so he said _Jesus Christ_  again. Her face lit up. He said it a few more times and she said it back. The she saw the blood, how his hand shook and how he was paler than the moon. She froze. Cherry didn’t find that encouraging. “What offense did I give?” he asked through a fit of coughs, “do not get the measure of me wrong, taking the Lord’s name in vain is an eccentricity I’ve only just taken up since being shot.” The girl turned her attention to Amber and they spoke in that strange way. Amber cast a sideways glance at him, but the girl refused to even look. Cherry felt like he was twelve again, waiting for his parents to decide how to best punish him. "Why don't you let me know what it is you're saying," Cherry said, "since I get the impression it is related to me."

“She says you speak the language of evil,” said Amber, as the young girl bent down and untied him. The stranger stood up to his full height, which made Cherry felt pathetic lying at his feet.

"I am not the devil, nor do I do his work. I might not go to church as often as a godly man may, yes, but--"

“Stop," said Amber, stepping over Cherry and picking up Pepper's reigns, "don't waste your breath. I am leaving.”

"Death hasn't got his running-iron on me just yet. Put me on my horse and I will be on my way."

"I am taking your horse," said Amber, who began to remove Cherry's saddle. Pepper looked back at the man warily, but did not try to get away.

"Not her," said Cherry, "take anything else. You can't take her."

"I cannot afford to wait until you die," said Amber.

Cherry's mind exploded, searching, grasping for that one thing he could say to convince Amber not to leave him. To take Pepper. To be left to die, alone. He stuttered and then a cascade of words came from somewhere deep inside and boiled over, “do you even know where you are?” Cherry caught his breath. Amber paused mid-stretch and Cherry saw his sharp ears turn, almost like a cats. He was listening closer. “Why else spend hours looking yonder at the stars? You’re lost. You need me. I know this land. What are you after? Take me and you'll find it.”

 _Please need me_ , he prayed. Amber looked at him with those black eyes. They looked like the eyes of the longhorn bull mounted over the Special saloon fireplace. Black glass, unblinking.

“I am looking for something that was stolen from me," said Amber.

Cherry grabbed the mans leg with a bloody hand, “information pertinent to your missing possession and the answer to my current predicament will be the same place, I promise you."

“And where is that?” asked Amber.

“Special.”


	11. Chapter 11

Luther Gray stood upon a carpet worth more money than he'd ever had and waited for the telegraph to finish.

_You have failed me, Luther. Stop._

The telegraph operator read the message with a grace its author, Owen Randall, would never have allowed.

  _If you do not recover the Sleeper then do not bother returning. Stop .  I warned you there would be an attempt. Stop. Unacceptable. Stop._

Telegraph networks were expensive to build, and towns the size of Special were rarely worth the investment. Owen Randall built the house soon after acquiring his fortune, then connected it by wire to his estate in California five years later. _It must have cost a fortune!_  Luther thought. He did not understand how one could afford to keep a house with full staff unoccupied, let alone the expense of paying for a telegraph wire to be installed. But Owen Randall had obtained a level of wealth that made any matter regarding money that Luther could think of obsolete. A footman offered Luther a drink and a seat in the drawing room while he waited for the telegraph operator to finish. Luther looked from the gold embroidery of the tufted velvet chair to his bloody clothes. He drank his whiskey and stood.

"One moment, sir, the rest of the message is incoming," said the telegraph operator.

Luther did not waste any time after returning to Special. As the sheriff detained Cherry's accomplices, Luther walked to the Randall estate and woke the servants. He needed to tell Owen what had happened, right away, even though the telegraph would upset him. Luther told him everything, because if Owen found out about the attack from anyone else, he was a dead man.  _Might be a dead man, anyway,_ Luther thought. He did not truly believe that. He was a survivor. Plus, he was smart. He used the ride back to special to think. He sent Layton Clay to speak with the Judge. And he had the rest of his posse keep an eye on the idiot sheriff so that nothing could go wrong.

A portrait of Randall and Strong hung over the hearth, it was at least four feet tall, and ever so slightly tilted off center. Owen Randall sat behind a desk, protractor in hand. His hair was such a light blonde Luther the artist had no choice but to render it in white. Special Strong stood behind him, tall and slender in his dark blue army uniform. Curly brown locks pinned behind his ears. Luther noticed the artist chose not to render Special's broken nose, the scar above his lip or the fact that his ears were actually quite large. It was a mistake. Those flaws, while considered individually were undesirable, added up an individual. The evidence of a life lived. The man in the painting could have been anyone. Anyone except Special Strong.

It had been years since Luther spoke with Special, and as far as he knew, it had been years since anyone had. Special was the man who first hired Luther, but now he worked for Owen.

"Sir," the telegraph operator said, "I am not sure whether to finish, or--" she trailed off. "A matter of propriety," she muttered.

"Finish the message, if you may," said Luther. She continued:

_I am sending my militia. If they find that man before you, I will not..._

"Please, ma'am," said Luther, "if you need to write it down--"

"Mr. Randall finishes by saying--" the telegraph operator read through the rest of the message like it was a stretch of hot coals she could avoid by rushing over it .

_I will not hesitate to track down your worthless dog of a mother and pay her half the union rate to shovel the dirt over your corpse . Stop._

"Thank you," said Luther, he walked over to the portrait and straightened it, "I apologize for waking you." His thumb left a small smudge of dirt on the golden frame, but the picture was straight.

Luther walked across the Randall estate as the sky turned over into day. _I warned you that there would be an attempt_. Luther turned the words over in his mind. Was that bumbling fool really  "the attempt ?" Luther flexed his hand. He cursed himself for not shooting that fool between the eyes the second he laid eyes on him. Just then, something hissed. Luther looked down to see an oppossum he'd nearly stepped on. Its mouth was open and bore a knot of babies on her back. They all looked up at him with black, obsidian eyes.

"Don’t worry, I’m not here for you" he said, and carefully stepped away. When he crossed the lawn, Mama opossum was still where he left her, mouth open in silent alarm. “Go on, now,” he said. She looked in his direction, but Luther didn't think she could see him. Then she turned, waddled off into the bush and was gone. Luther found Sadie tied to an apple tree. She nuzzled the fallen fruit and eyed Luther warily as he approached. "Hey, now," he said. She bristled, but let him touch her. "I know," he said.

”Got word?" called Layton Clay as Luther cantered down the road that led from the estate. Clay was Luther's best man, and the best shot aside from himself. He went unscathed by the explosion, except for a scratch across the length of his forhead. "Honestly thought he'd be chewing you out for another hour," the man turned his gelding and trotted alongside Luther, smoking a pipe. “I would bet my weeks wage Randall was so steamed he could boil water between his cheeks.” They rode back to the jail together.

”The plan remains the same,” said Luther, “we find the man.” He watched as the dawn rose over the horizon, "what did the Judge tell you?"

"A'yeah, he was sore about being woken up, but he told as much as you expected," said Clay, his eyes daring upward.

"I didn't tell you to hit him."

"Only ever implied he may be hit," Clay said, "granted he didn't appreciate that, but when he learned I was working for you, he decided it was in his best interests to go along." Layton lit a match, then lit his pipe, he talked out of the corner of his mouth. "You plannin' to tell the sheriff, your plan? Or at the very least, me?"

"The sheriff is an idiot. But if you have questions, then ask them." There was not a single light on in the entire town.

"What are we to do about the dandy?”

“We kill Cherry,” said Luther.

“Agree on that point,” said Layton, ”and the woman and the cowboy? Why not just kill them and be done with it? Why go through the trouble of lookin' up the Judge?”

"You are a good man, Layton, but you are uncreative. If I kill them outright, I will be an outlaw. Instead, I am going to pay their bail,” said Luther Gray, and he stepped into the jail.

*   *   *

The cowboy's face fell when Luther Gray stepped in front of the cell.

"People keep telling me what I will not do," he said, "when they should be more concerned about what I will."

"In a minute, Luther, I was just about to question the cowboy," said sheriff Cristophe Curdy Jr., who trailed behind Luther like a child. Curdy's deputy, a boy who couldn't have been more than fifteen, was the last to enter.

Luther Gray was not a man who was irritated easily, but he was a man who was irritated deeply. Details that seemed innocuous about sheriff Curdy at first glance now drove an ice pick into his brain when he noticed them. The way he wore his .48 Scofield in the front of his belt and rested his arm on the grip as if it were a saddle-horn. The dissonance between his brown shirt and his maroon ascot tie. Even the way his gold star was pinned upon his chest, surrounded by faded tobacco stains. _The man can't even spit with enough fortitude to clear his own chest, for gods sake,_ he thought. But the worst offense, by far, was the way he kept referring to him as "Luther."

Half a dozen of Luther's company stood outside the jail door, ragged and beaten. None of them called him "Luther." All were willing to kill for him, and he demanded that they all be willing to die. They had his respect. But respect wasn't enough.

Curdy's father-in-law was cousins with Owen Randall. Curdy Sr. had his son appointed by the judge before the dirt was thrown over the previous sheriff's grave. Luther hadn't known the man, but by all accounts he was a good man. He stood up to the outlaw Maple North, and that deserve respect. Of course, he died when North left a bullet in his chest. But Curdy had no backbone. Everything he had, was given to him. A shiny badge only meant as much as the man it was pinned upon.

"There's no need," said Luther, "I have proof--"

"As you say," said Curdy, with an air of parental deference, as if Luther was some child he allowed to have their own way, "but as the sheriff I chose to get the truth for myself. And so I will interview the woman--"

"The name's Grace," said the woman, "if it's all the same to you." Grace McCall laid upon the metal cot, she did not sit up when Curdy unlocked it. Her hair was long, dark brown, with red highlights on the top where the sun had bleached it. Luther suspected her dress was more dust than fabric. 

"Two men in Luther's employ died today," said Curdy, "a man named Cherry is responsible, Luther has given me sufficient evidence that you know this man."

 _Given him evidence?!_ The words bore into his mind like an icicle falling from forty feet into the back of his head.

"Is this the wagon Cherry aimed to hold up?" asked Grace, "the truth is, he asked us to participate and we declined. Me and my colleague, Jake Boot." Grace turned and addressed Luther directly, "with respect, Mr. Gray, I don't understand how Cherry managed to kill any of your men. The boy could shoot at the ground and miss."

 _Mr. Gray,_ thank god someone in this Jail has sense, he thought. Curdy blanched but Luther did not even look at him. The fool was digging his own grave, and Luther wasn't going to stop him.

"God damn, are you trying to kill us?!" ejaculated the cowboy, then he realized how loud he said that, and melted into the crowd.

Curdy hit the bars of Jake's cell with the butt of his pistol, "Quiet!" then turned to Grace, "your business is with me, not with Luther. So you confess you were involved with the crime?"

“Knowing Cherry Cole is not a crime,” said Grace, “neither is being offered to partake in illegal activity. Yes, we rode with Cherry for a time, but when his intentions turned to mischief and thievery, we parted ways.” She laid on the cot, comfortable, without a single muscle tensed. Luther looked to the cowboy. The man was would as tight as a violin.

Curdy furrowed his brow so tight it threatened to envelop this whole face, “but you admit to being privy. You were aiding. That is still a crime--” Luther watched as the gears turned in his mind. None of them caught.

“Cherry could spin yarn around an elephant,” said Grace, "how am I to know he would actually do the damn thing?"

“This is no defense!” shouted sheriff Curdy, "you knew, and did nothing. It was a conspiracy."

“He also told me!” shouted an old man with the shaky voice, who pushed past the cowboy to grab the bars of the cell, “he told me 'bout nine in the morning.”

"Who are you?" asked Luther.

"This does not involve you, Mason," said sheriff Curdy, then turning to Luther, "he's no one."

"I am not no one!" said the old man.

"He's a barber," said Curdy, "a drunkard--"

“Was drunk when you brought me in," said the old man, "sick from not being drunk now, but my mind is sober. I gave that man a haircut and he told me he was aiming to rob Mr. Gray. Told it to me like it was nothing."

Luther scoffed.  _Nothing?_  Curdy stood up even straighter. “You better watch yourself, Mason, or I will be inclined to tie your fate along with these two."

“Hang the only doctor in Special,” said Mason, "bright move, sheriff!"

Curdy flushed, "I'll hang every doctor in Texas--"

"Stop," said Luther. The jail was dead silent. The old man, Mason, looked from Luther to Curdy.

"He can't help you," growled Curdy.

In a single movement, Luther grabbed Curdy by the neck and pushed him against the bars. He hit so hard dust fell into Curdy's hair. “Tell me what I can not do again, and you will die,” said Luther Gray, “it has been a long day, and I have been tested. I will not tolerate anymore.” His men flooded the jail, and the deputy raised his hands straight into the air.

Sheriff Curdy fumbled at his holster, but Luther's hand was over the butt of his gun. "You wear your gun in the front," said Luther, as Curdy's fingernails scratched the back of his hand, "did you put it there for me?" Curdy choked for breath. Luther pulled out the .48 Scofield and drew it on the sheriff, then let the man go. Curdy fell to his feet, tears welling up in his eyes.

“You can't,” said Curdy, coughing, “I'm the sheriff--”

“I am not going to kill you, sheriff,” said Luther, “I am going to kill every man Cherry Cole has ever associated with, so that everyone knows what happens if you help him. Then, when he has no more places to hide, no one else in the world who loves him, I will shoot him. Once, every hour, and only with my sixth and last bullet will he die.” Luther kicked Curdy, who yelped like a dog. Then he thrust his hand inside his ragged duster and pulled out a bill-fold. He threw a handful of notes on the sheriff. "For their bail.”

"What is happening?" asked Jake.

"My associate, Layton, spoke with the Judge tonight. He confirmed what I suspected. Two horses were reported stolen from the Bar Arrow Ranch. The perpetrators were named Jake Boot and Grace McCall. A bounty was placed on your heads, you are charged with."

"No," said Jake, "there must be some mistake, we paid Mr. Dayton--"

“Sheriff Curdy has kindly allowed me to take your bounty,” Luther slid the sheriff's .48 into the front of his belt. Luther looked down at the sheriff.

"Take them," said Curdy, a smudge of blood on his lip, "and get out." He didn't dare look Luther in the eye. Curdy's deputy ran over to him, and held his hand.

"You are going to kill us," said Grace, she turned to Jake, "Well, I'm sorry Jake. You were right."

"I will not kill you until I have Cherry" said Luther, opening the iron doors wide, "I will not kill you until he can watch."


	12. Chapter 12

For the first time in her life Elsie Meyer walked toward Special. Crouton's tail swayed this way and that as he led her down the trail. The angel rode alongside her, on a spotted gray and white horse. He held the unconscious man who spoke the demon language upright in front of him. Elsie wondered if demons could read your mind mind, because each time she wondered if he was dead he would groan. The angel said something to the man, in his language.

Elsie did something she never would have done to her father. She asked a question. "How do you know his language?" 

"It is what most people speak beyond the veil. Only princes and royalty speak in the formal tongue."

"Does that mean you're a prince? Since you can speak it?" Elsie could tell immediately that she had made a mistake. The muscles in the angel's jaw tensed. Elsie scrambled for something to say, "do you think my Father is a prince? His name is James Meyer."

"That name means nothing to me." The angel jostled the man awake, who groaned and then sat upright. He slumped over again almost immediately.

"Well, he is my father," she said, defensively, "he's the only man I know."

"The only man I know from your world is Special Strong," a shadow passed over the angels face, "and Luther Gray."

"You know me," said Elsie.

Elsie felt the angel's eyes on her. It did not feel like her father, who's gaze weighed her down like a bucket full of water. James Meyer did not look at his daughter, he searched her. Observing mistakes and flaws as if they were insects he could pick off of her. The angel looked at her in a completely different way. He looked at her with curiosity. The gray horse, too, watched Elsie. "It's okay," she whispered, "I won't hurt you." The front half of the horse was gray, and the back half was white, with specks of gray along her back. "It looked like someone started painting your horse, then ran out of paint," she said. The horse glared at Crouton, give a dismissive snort, and then turned away. Crouton was too busy plodding over to a nearby shrub to take any notice.

"This is not my horse," said the angel, "but it will be mine if Cherry Cole dies."

The demon had a name. Cherry Cole. Poppy was fast asleep in Elsie's arms, and Elsie reflexively held him tighter. James Meyer said Poppy was the only goat he'd ever actually seen sleep. But Elsie napped with the goats and cows whenever her father was out hunting. None of the animals on the farm felt tense when she was around. She felt them stiffen when her father was around, like he let off a light electric shock whenever he was close. Elsie figured she stiffened, too. Though neither Crouton or Poppy seemed concerned about the angel. And although the demon made her nervous, Crouton and Poppy didn't seem scared of Cherry Cole whatsoever.

"Are you from Heaven?" Elsie asked.

"I do not know that place. I live in the Perare outpost," said the angel.

"What's Perare? Is it bigger than Special?" she asked.

"Perare is a city that extends beyond the horizon, under the mountains, and above the clouds."

"Why don't you live there?"

"I am not allowed," the angel said.

"Why not?"

The angel pulled the horse to a stop. "We have arrived," he said. Down the valley, through the dying trees was the town of Special.

 

*   *   *

 

Before the man named Cherry passed out, he and the angel came to some sort of an agreement. Elsie didn't understand very much of the angels plan, but she understood it was her job to find a man named "Mason." And so with a goat in her hands and a cow trailing after her Elsie Meyer took her first step into Special.

The sun hadn't even lifted itself over the hills but the town was already alive. There were so many people. Buildings everywhere, looming over her, so tall they blocked out the sky. Some were so close together they touched. Elsie looked down a muddy alley. The smell hit her like a charging goat.

Crouton had his own agenda. He jerked the lead out of Elsie's hand, and just as she ran to grab it a two horse wagon clamored in front of her. One of the horses raised up and whinnied, and Crouton jumped playfully, shaking his head. The man riding the cart yelled something in the demon language at her. Elsie could understand the venomous emotion behind it, if not the words. Crouton started sniffing at the hay at the back of the cart, and the man paused his berating of Elsie to yelp in alarm. He reached by his feet and came up with a long black leather horse whip. Elsie darted past the cart and pulled Crouton away as the man began to swing. No one paid any attention to them. Elsie led Crouton away from the screaming man as quickly as she could. Poppy stirred in her arms but Elsie pet his head and whispered to him. _It's okay, everything will be okay._

She was here, and it was more amazing than she could have ever imagined.

The town ended at a hill which sloped down until it hit the river. A number of small carts sat along the path down to the river and a network of tents dotted the field outside the town. The smoke from two dozen cook fires filled the air with the smell of sizzling pork, porridge and hominy cakes. Men and women scrubbed out their clothing in the river. Others, lower down, dumped their waste into it. There were so many people Elsie could barely comprehend it. They all seemed to come together and create a single living being.

Elsie walked past the carts and a man waved at her. He was a kind looking man with a large white beard. Elsie waved back.

"Hello, do you know where I might find Mr. Mason? He's a doctor."

The man stared at her as if she had just picked up Crouton with one harm. He said something she didn't understand, but she picked out one word, "mason."

"Yes! May-son," she repeated, slowly, hoping he would understand. Croutons lead pulled again. Elsie pulled back. "Cut it out, Crouton--" she said as the rope ripped out of her hands like a snake darting through the grass. Her hand burned, raw and red. She gasped in pain and Poppy jumped out of her arms, bleating. A strange man was holding Croutons lead. He was gaunt, with deep set eyes that seemed to have more yellow in them than white. Elsie was reminded of the wild dogs that roamed around the farm. Hungry and unpredictable. Desperate. The man inspected Crouton's teeth and mumbled something under his breath. When Elsie yelled at him, the man barely even glanced at her. Elsie ran over to Crouton and grabbed the rope around his neck. She saw the man was wearing a white apron stained the color of rust. Blood. The man dragging Crouton away from her was something she had never seen before. _Is this evil?_ Elsie's ears were ringing before she even realized she was on the ground. The man had slapped her. He waited for her to meet his eye, then pointed to Crouton's flank, to his brand. He said something in a deep drawling voice. Elsie didn't need to know the language to understand it: _Mine._

"No," Elsie said, "Crouton was given to us by God!" Elsie grabbed the lead and pulled with both arms as hard as she could, but it was no use, he was too strong. When the man pulled her hands off Crouton, Elsie thought his skin felt like a plucked chicken, clammy, sticky. But underneath his grip was iron and Elsie worried he would break her wrist. "You're hurting me," she said, as he held both her arms in one hand, and then pointed at Poppy. Elsie understood:  _Get out of here, or i'll take that little white goat, too._

He dropped her and she fell to her knees. Tears blinded her. Tears of fury. When Elsie screamed she felt the whole world explode in fire. She charged the man who had the audacity to laugh. He stopped when he felt her teeth dig deep into his side. The man yowled in pain and tried to pull her off but Elsie wouldn't let go, she bit until she tasted blood. He pulled her hair and choked her but she didn't let go until the man drew up his arm and slammed his elbow upon her head.

Then, the world disappeared. _Angel,_ she thought, _help_. Elsie coughed in the dirt and tried to stand. Hay stuck to the side of her face and in her hair. Crouton turned around, looked at her with wide, scared eyes. The man pulled up his shirt, and turned in a circle trying to see the red circular wound. He was cursing. You didn't need to know a language to understand someone cursing in it. Elsie almost fell back down when Crouton nudged her. Poppy climbed onto her back and bleated into her ear, it was not helpful, but it made her smile anyway. Elsie grabbed Crouton by the ears and looked him in the eyes.

"Kick him," she said.

The man walked over and picked Poppy from off Elsie's back, held the goat under one arm and kicked Elsie, hard. So hard that she left the ground entirely. The immediately gasped for breath, but she couldn't catch it. _I'm drowning,_ she thought, _I'm drowning in the open air_. Elsie curled into a ball, holding the end of Crouton's lead. The man pried her hands apart with his sticky iron grip. Elsie looked into Crouton's large, black eyes _. Do it now,_ she thought, _please_. The man pulled her fingers off the rope, then waved it in front of her face, smiling. Like a charge of dynamite, the cow kicked out sideways directly into the mans crotch with a _crunch_. Poppy jumped out of the mans arms and onto Croutons back as he folded on top of himself like wet paper. Crouton threw up his head triumphantly and snorted. Elsie reached for the rope around Crouton's neck and pulled herself up.

The man moaned. This time, people did pay attention. A crowd trickled in around them as Elsie wiped blood from her lip.  _Serves you right_ , she thought, taking thin, sharp breaths.

"Mason!" the man yelled.

"Mason!" Elsie echoed.

 


	13. Chapter 13

Grace was thirteen when she watched the life bleed out of Tom Kelly. Jesse was fourteen when the pistol fell from his hands and into the wet, rotting leaves. Grace staunched the wound and felt the blood pump through her fingers with each fading heartbeat. Jesse grabbed her by the shoulder. "Stop crying!” he yelled through his own tears, “we gotta go!”

Jesse McCall did want to be a murderer, he just didn't want the same calloused aching hands of his father. Hands best used to stifle the near constant dry cough that came from breathing in iron dust all day. The cough that killed. "If it's between get out of this town, and bein' stuck here forever, hell, I won't even blink," he said. Grace wasn't sure how far she would go. She was haunted by her mothers’ fingers. The way they twisted around an invisible needle and pointed blame at everyone but herself. Grace didn't see why they couldn't just up and leave. They never had money before, and they survived just fine. Why did they need it now? "Trust me, bright eyes,” her brother told her, “once this is all over, we’ll be the ones callin’ the shots. No one’s gonna make us hold no hammer, no needle, no nothin'. Now go on and do your part.”

The McCall family pistol slid easily out of her fathers belt. He groaned but did not wake. Grace could smell the alcohol, not on his breath, but from his sweat. She watched her father sleep and then left and never saw him again. Jesse practiced drawing the pistol, pretending to kill imaginary foes, and making shooting noises. He would not let her hold it. It would be years until Grace had enough sense to tell that he was a fool.

Tom Kelly was the mill owners son. The boy was sweet on Grace, and they struck up a rather strange friendship. When her brother found out, he made a plan. Grace lead Tom into the woods where Jesse would robbed him. Tom was not cowed by the sight of the McCall family pistol as Jesse thought he would be. His right fist flew and knocked Jesse clean off his feet. The two boys scrambled in the leaf litter as Grace picked up the pistol. She fired into the dirt. Tom froze.

"Alright, fine, quit shooting," said Tom as he Jesse from a headlock, stood up, then threw a small billfold at Grace's feet.

"All of it," said Jesse, rubbing his neck, "I know you have more."

"That's enough, Jesse," said Grace, "there's at least ten dollars in there."  _What kid has a billfold?_  she wondered, w _hat kid has money?_ But the Kelly's weren't like the McCalls. They lived in a house with two floors and a staircase. They had servants. Their mother did needlework as a hobby. Their father laughed when he drank.

"The watch isn't mine to give," said Tom. "It's my dads."

"I could give a god damn," said Jesse, his face was flushed and his hands were trembling. Tom bolted, like a rabbit snapped who just discovered it had legs. He pushed Grace aside and and she fell into her brother. Had Tom not slipped, it's possible that Grace McCall never would have become an outlaw. But he did. And as the boy stumbled to his feet, it gave Jesse enough time to walk over, take the pistol from Grace's hands and shoot.

Jesse and Grace left that night with thirty dollars, a gold watch chain and a bounty for two hundred dollars on their heads. They followed the Scioto river for a month and then hitched a ride on a wagon train full of settles. They stopped in Battle, Kentucky. Jesse was sure they were free and clear but Grace knew, even then, they never would be. Twelve years later Jesse McCall would be one of the deadliest outlaws in the west, and Grace would be hauled out of a prison by the bounty hunter Luther Gray on a trumped up charge of rustling.

 

*   *   *   *

 

Layton Clay handed Grace a canteen. His arm brushed aside his brown duster revealing a Smith & Wesson model 3 revolver, a powerful weapon that was capable of killing a man with one shot. He had a lazy smile, like it was placed it on his face long ago and forgotten there. After she was done drinking, he took the canteen back and drank the rest. "Your boy, the cowpoke." he wiped his mouth on a dirty sleeve, "He's got no edge. What's he doin' robbing banks?" Layton lit a pipe.

"What are you doing riding with Luther Gray?" asked Grace.

Layton took a drag and then exhaled. "Workin'."

"Well there you have it. That's what he's doing. Besides, Jake's no shooter. I am."

Layton's eyebrows raised and he looked Grace up and down. "You're the muscle, then," he said.

"Something like that."

"You're the muscle, the cowpoke is what, the brains?"

"That, if you could believe it, was Cherry."

"Quite an outfit," said Layton, "quite an outfit." He touched the butt of her rifle which was tied to his horse. "You rob banks with this?"

"Allegedly," said Grace, flaring a match.

"I'm not blind. I seen women who can shoot better'n me. I seen this trick shooter, name of Montclair, she shot a quarter six times before it hit the ground. I know women can shoot," he leaned in close, "But why are you?" They rode along the trail that led back to the gorge. "You going around with a clown and some rustler? You got to know how foolish that is. Robbing Mr. Gray? Killing his men?"

"I didn't kill anyone," said Grace, "get that straight." The last of her cigarette turned to ash and she flicked it into the dirt. Why Luther Gray wanted to go back to the gorge, Grace had no idea. They untied her hands, but took her rifle. They didn't let her ride Sea Bird, her horse, and stuck her on the gelding of a dead man named Eamon Trank. Layton rode Jake's horse, Horse. Jake was not creative when it came to names. Jake rode some other dead mans horse. It was a clear message: _You will ride the horses we tell you to. You will do what we tell you to._

"I'm just trying to survive," said Grace.

"I'm not smart like Mr. Gray, but seems to me if you want to survive, robbing banks and rustling horses is a bad way to go about it."

 _What other choice did we have?_ thought Grace. 


	14. PART TWO

An abundance of summer rain combined with mild winters led to record profits for Texas cattlemen during the early 1870's. As the decade waned the market leveled out, but as ‘79 tumbled over into ‘80, the market exploded. A cow sold at market for up to eighty dollars. Five cows sold for more money than most men saw in their lives. A thousand made someone wealthy beyond precedent and rationality. Cattleman joined the oil barons and railroad magnates on the stage of power in the west. Cash money walked from Texas to California and all the cattlemen needed were people to guide it there.

Few, if any, of the profit trickled down to the wranglers, drovers and ranch hands that tended the cattle. Part of the reason was pure greed, the other part was bigotry. By the 1860's up to thirty percent of Texas' settler population was black. While the Texas ranchers fought in the civil war, their slaves tended the cattle. They learned the skills to handle the beasts efficiently. And after the war, ranchers had no choice but to hire the skilled workers. But the law said nothing of paying them fairly. Drives to the north was a new cornerstone of Texas wealth. Most cowboys were happy to get anything at all.

Jake William Boot was raised on an east Texas ranch to a first generation cowboy and a schoolteacher. Jake knew cattle but he knew horses better. Jake's main duty was handing the remuda, a herd of spare horses each outfit brought along with them. As a black man, Jake was also tasked with jobs white cowboys didn't want. One of those responsibilities was breaking stubborn horses, pulling calves out of the mud and riding the lines at night. Jake didn’t mind, as all of those jobs were solitary endeavors. There wasn't a horse in Texas that could throw Jake Boot, in fact, there wasn’t anything or anyone who could shake him.

Cherry walked into camp two weeks before they were to set off for Cheyenne. He was hired on as a drag man, someone who kept to the rear of the cattle line. Drag men came and went, and rarely stayed on for more than one drive. Few cowboys did more than four. It was such hard work for so little pay. Jake didn’t want to ever stop riding. People came in and out of Jake’s life and that was fine.

Jake learned that Cherry was a former rodeo star or some small renown. He found that notion curious, due to the fact that Cherry didn’t know the difference between a bullfrog and a bull. Though, Jake had to admit, the man was handy with a lasso. Each night like clockwork one of the guys would beg Cherry to go through his rope trick routine, and Cherry would oblige. Jake never stayed to watch because unlike Cherry, his work wasn’t finished.

Jake's father taught him all there was to know about horses. His mother taught him to read, to write and to play the guitar. Nothing fancy. A few chords for his mother's favorite prayer songs. He didn’t have a sharp talent, but he could keep a tune. Most cowboys sang, as a way to pass the time and because singing kept the cows calm. At night, calm was a matter of survival. Jake also wrote his own songs. Just something to occupy the long night hours.

During a cattle drive, the cattle aren’t bunched up in a group. They’re strung out in a long line that goes on for miles. Men rode the line on either side, speaking in hand signals and whistles. Drag men, like Cherry, rode along rear and pointers in the front. The cattle sleep at night but someone needed to ride the line to watch out for predators, rustlers, or strays. Jake Boot worked alone. Jake’s horse, which he named 'Horse,' was trained to work at night. Horse was squat, and somewhat slow, but he was sure footed and didn’t startle easily. When a wrong step into a groundhog hole meant death, that was important. 

Jake liked the solitude. It was quiet. The sky was full of purple glass and silver glitter. Jake pulled out his guitar and sang:

 

_Oh, marigold won’t you stay_

_Golden just for me_

_Oh, marigold won’t you promise you’ll stay_

_Golden just for me_

_*_

_I took a match to my marigold_

_The flame that it burned, burned gold_

_Oh, little flame won’t you promise you’ll stay_

_Golden just for me_

 

"Did you write that?"

Jake nearly jumped out of his saddle. He turned Horse with one hand and the other went to the revolver stashed in front of his saddle. It was Cherry Cole, a man he'd never spoken a word to, riding across the line on a gray and white appaloosa. The man was slender, but not wiry. A black derby hat sat askew over his tumbling curly hair. He wore a simple cotton shirt with a black vest and black trousers. His wore a slack jacket with a narrow lapel and a high button front. He didn’t wear chaps, and his pants were tailored. Instead of high, riding boots, he wore a short boot with a white top. No spurs. He looked as if he was riding home from the saloon, not driving cattle. But he sat well on the horse, and Jake could tell he at least knew how to ride. "Cole? What are you doing?"

"The song, I meant. It is good. A touch short,” said Cherry, “the melody could hold another three verses. Get a fiddle? Ten verses.” Jake turned Horse so that he faced Cherry. The moonlight turned the young man’s straw hair silver at the edges. "As to why I am here, that is an infelicitous story, indeed. I accidentally caused the beginning -- mind you only the beginning -- of a stampede." Cherry laughed. It was a strange sound, more a long wheeze that accelerated into a hiccup than a true laugh. Cherry was either unaware of how he sounded, or unconcerned by it. Jake despised the sound of his own laugh and rarely, if ever, indulged himself.

Jake frowned. "Since when are there measurements and degrees. It is either a stampede, or it is not."

"I might have agreed with you If I hadn't witnessed it for myself," Cherry took off his derby hat and ran his hands through his hair, knocking out dust, “participated in it.” The dust drifted through the moonlight and gave Cherry a ghostly aura.

"That sounds like the stampede was halted," said Jake. Cherry led his horse until it stood alongside Jake’s. Although Jake was the taller man, Cherry's horse was a number of hands taller than Horse. If anything, Jake had to look up. “Besides, that still doesn’t explain why you are here.”

"Rattlesnakes are dreadful beasts. Pepper here," Cherry ran his hand through the horses mane, "she is not of this country. She is Montana born and raised. Where at least the dreadful snakes have enough manners to be dreadful in silence." Cherry continued to dust off his hat. _Maybe he really did fall_ , thought Jake.  Light traced the angle of Cherry’s cheekbone so flatteringly Jake wondered if the moon just enjoyed shining on him. "A serpent got to rattling and Pepper bucked. The herd spooked, and a stampede started-- but," Cherry held up a hand, "only started."

"You will never convince me that you stopped a stampede," said Jake, “It is clear that one didn’t fully start.” Jake led his horse on and around the sleeping cattle. Cherry turned and caught up with him.

“In my telling and re-telling of the story, Eamon told me that I should talk to you. He said you have never been thrown from your horse.”

“Of course I’ve been thrown,” said Jake, and it was true. It happened when he was a child, like most young kids with dreams of being a mustang wrangler. “Besides what does that--”

Cherry held up both hands. “I explained the situation of the rattlesnake, which started a chain reaction. Pepper --like I said out of her element-- bucked me and in my discomposure I may have screamed, which confused the steer. Putting an end to a stampede witch had only just _begun_."

“Screamed?”

“I was told it was not a, how did Eamon describe it? Not a natural sound.”

“Hold one moment,” Jake composed himself, "You are telling me, your scream was so jarring a sound that it threw the stampede?” Jake stifled a laugh, but not the  grin which turned up his face. “Please, you must recreate this sound.”

"You’d have to do an awful lot to get me to scream like that again," said Cherry.

Jake’s grin melted away. He struggled to find a place to look that felt natural. “I still don’t understand why you are here,” he said.

“As I said, I told and retold my story, and your name kept coming up. Jake Boot’s the best rider i’ve seen, they said, Jake Boot could break an earthquake. Finally I said I must meet this man, and they told me you rode at night.” He pointed at Jake's guitar, which Jake completely forgot he was holding. "Play that song again. I think I got it.”

“What does it matter if I ride alone?” asked Jake.

“It’s not right for anyone to be alone,” said Cherry, “I won’t ask again, play that song. I’ve got it figured, and I don’t want to lose it.”

"What might you lose?"

"Find out,” said Cherry. Unable to think of any response, Jake sang. When he got to the second verse Cherry came in with a harmony. His voice was pretty, a slight falsetto that trembled in the air. Cherry’s voice slid over Jake’s rough tenor like warm honey over toast.

“Play it again,” said Cherry. As they made their way together across the rolling hills of country that neither could have named, Jake did.

*   *   *

After that night Cherry joined Jake each night. Cherry taught Jake a few more chords on the guitar, and Jake taught Cherry basic facts about horses and cattle. Most nights though, Jake didn’t say anything at all, which suited him. Cherry talked, sang, told stories until his head drooped and he fell asleep. Literally talked himself to sleep. In less than a week Jake learned more about Cherry than he knew about any living person. 

Cherry Cole was born in a brothel. He didn’t tell Jake that, but Jake was pretty sure that’s what he meant when he said he was “raised in an establishment of amusement and obtainable services.” By age five, Cherry was making money dressing up in diminutive leather chaps and an oversized cowboy hat and singing trail songs for the men waiting by the bar. By ten he was on his own, on the rodeo circuit, playing guitar, singing and trick roping. Cherry worked for a man known as Lazarus Magnificent, which Jake suspected was not his Christian name. The side show exhibition operated out of a wagon, and traveled from town to town providing entertainment between livestock auctions, small town rodeos, weddings, parties. Anywhere people gathered, Cherry was there, skipping over his lasso with a smile. His routine consisted of the Texas skip;  a trick where he would hop through a vertical loop, left to right, right to left. Next he did the flat loop, which looked just about the same as how it sounded. The last was spoke jumping, a trick Jake could not understand until Cherry got off his horse and demonstrated it.

Because Cherry went through his life in such detail, whenever he didn’t over explain something, it stuck out. Jake learned more from these exclusions than he did the deluge of useless details. Cherry mentioned that he started performing his routine on top of a horse, and then, on top of an unruly, bucking horse. He just said it was something he started doing, as if anyone might make that logical progression. Jake wondered. As a kid, Cherry was cute as a button, hopping this way and that, singing his little songs. But a grown man doing the same thing is different. As to why Cherry donned clown makeup? People always cheer when someone falls in a rodeo. No matter what they say, that’s what they came to see.  Cherry said that one day he decided to move on from the rodeo, from performing. Jake thought what likely happened was Cherry picked himself up from the mud and cow pies one day to see a young boy, with curly blonde hair, who was no more than ten ushered out after him to thunderous applause. The boy would perform a series of rope tricks identical to Cherry’s and behind him Lazarus Magnificent counted his money. There was no way that Cherry quit. If Jake learned anything, it’s that Cherry was not a man who left, he was a man who was left behind.

And Cherry never talked about his time in the army.

The last time Cherry fell asleep, Jake woke him up and sent him back to camp, but the fool fell back asleep again and wandered in the wrong direction for miles. It took Jake an hour to track him down the next day. 

The next time Cherry’s head began to droop, Jake found a break in the line and rode next to him, taking Pepper’s reigns in his hand. Cherry awoke, confused, and Jake motioned for the man to climb up onto Horse. With him. “You are going to fall off your horse,” said Jake, “I don’t want my pay docked because you broke your neck on my watch.” For once, Cherry said nothing. Jake sat up straight and Cherry stood even straighter, but as the moon rolled across the sky, Cherry leaned back. Jake had his arms around Cherry, to hold the reign, and Cherry leaned his head against Jake’s bicep. Somewhere, an animal screamed in pain and was silenced. Jake didn’t care. The world could be as cruel as it wanted. The devil could hide all the horror and brutality it wanted in the shadows of the night. What was it to him? For the first time in his life, Jake Boot was comfortable.

“What was that?” Cherry stirred at the sound.

“Shh, you’re okay,” said Jake. He didn’t want Cherry to move. Didn’t want to disturb him, didn't want anything to change.

Cherry shifted. He turned and looked Jake, his gray eyes lit up by the moon, “are you, Jake Boot?” Cherry asked. _Oh_ , he thought. Jake wondered if this might happen. It wasn’t the first time Jake connected with a man on the trail, but it was rare it ever led this far. Jake usually shut it down, but something about Cherry made him not want to. But the truth was, he wasn’t okay. Couldn’t be. When he was a boy, Jake tried to reverse the gears inside himself, but it was like trying to bend the  very core of him. So he settled for having the things that moved inside his heart lay still. He welcomed the rust that covered them. Whatever anyone has in them that makes them grab the sun from the sky was gone from Jake. He could not even weep for it’s loss, that was also connected to the intricate machinery inside him. Each time Jake took a man in his arms just made it all the more obvious he could never be the person he wanted.

“Cherry… I can’t,” said Jake, “I’m broken.” Jake couldn’t feel Cherry’s hand on his cheek even though he knew it was there. He couldn’t feel Cherry shift in the saddle, the way he turned so he could face him. All he saw was the way the moonlight reflected off of Cherry’s lip. And the way the corners of his mouth stuck together.

“So what?” said Cherry, “I just need to know you’re okay.”

“I’m okay--”

Cherry kissed him. The world did not change, nothing frozen inside Jake’s heart melted. Jake felt Cherry’s curls tickle his brow. The earth spun upon its axis, it taking no notice of the two men entwined upon it, and they took no notice of it. Jake knew it was just a kiss. It couldn’t fix him. But God, if anything ever would, it would be Cherry in his arms, with his lips as soft as moonlight. The broken thing inside him ground together, and he saw Cherry stopped. _Can he tell?_ Jake wondered. Did something in his face give it away?  “You’re okay,” said Cherry, so close that his lips brushed Jake’s when he whispered. Cherry Cole, who sang like he kissed the stiff tendons in Jake’s neck. “We’re okay,” he said and Jake knew he was right. Jake lifted up Cherry’s chin with one calloused, dirty hand and tried his best to kiss him back hoping that for once it was enough to just be okay.

It was.

In less than a month after they kissed, the world Jake Boot knew would crumble into dust.


	15. Chapter 15

As the territory grasslands folded over into the sloping valleys of the Colorado river basin Jake Boot remembered why he loved Texas. It was the stillness of it. The way the lavender bloomed the hills purple. In Colorado the wind whispers through the pines as if the mountains were breathing. Jake didn’t like the idea of that. _The things in this world that are alive, are cruel,_ he thought

Heavy rains from upriver spilled over the banks of a river Jake didn't know the name of. Eamon said it was "the river so mean it makes the cottonmouths jealous," but Jake didn't think and that was accurate. The water poured into a nearby meadow and spread out for almost a mile. The cross was dangerous and extremely slow. During the perilous crossing they lost: one horse, two barrels of whiskey, three bags of flour and four cattle.

The chuck wagon was down to hardtack, salt beef and tins of fruit less than a week after the crossing. Jake ate his ration without complaint, but everyone was not so complacent. Jake enjoyed a good steak now and again, but all else being equal, he would rather not have to bother with eating at all. “There’s silver in Colorado, everyone saying it,” said Eamon Trank, eating peaches from a tin can. Drinking them down, one by one, as if they were liquid. Eamon was once a point-man. But he was demoted to drover after his habit of falling into extended periods of drunkeness became too much for the trail boss to ignore. “After I’m paid up I aim to buy a plot of land and try my luck,” he continued.

“We’re still three weeks out of Cheyenne,” said Jake, "not to give offense, but you are broke just about as soon as you're paid. Might as well have the boss hand your pay to the brothel."

Eamon shook his head. “Silver’s in the ground, I aim to take it out,” said Eamon, “there's no harm in a round of the cure after three months on the job. A man must live or he will die. One has not to do with the other.”

"I don't mean to make an argument of it. Your business is yours. Only mean to provide a word of caution," said Jake.

"Caution your own self," said Eamon, slurping down the last peach and throwing the tin into the fire, "you're the only one on this drive worth even half a damn, everyone else got brain cavities so small they wouldn't even make a drinkin' cup for a canary --but that doesn't mean I will take disrespect, Boot."

Jake put his hands up and looked down, "no disrespect, Eamon. Your plans are your own." Eamon sat up, snorted pompously, then left. Jake sat and grumbled to himself. He was surrounded by men who were so concerned with their phantom wealth they never got around to making it. It was said if you got four cowboys in a room together, you had four million ways to get rich. All Jake wanted was a little ranch to himself. Texas was known for cattle, not horses. The horses were said to be stringy beasts, mean as spitfire. But Jake could find a good line, he had an eye for it. If he brought it up he could... _God_ , he thought, _I’m the same as all of them._

“Boot,” someone yelled, “Where’s Boot?”

Jake sat up, unfolding his long limbs. He never knew how to move confidently without a horse under him. His spurs jingled as he jogged toward Dustin Krueger, the trail boss. “I'm here.”

“Circus Cole called it out,” said Dustin, “we got a dogie.” Jake set off to find Horse. As well as his revolver.

Calves are slow, fragile creatures and the general practice was to kill them so they didn’t slow down the drive. The men didn't mind because it meant fresh meat but they left the actual deed for Jake to handle. Jake rode past the drovers bringing up the end of the line and they pointed back down the path. Coyotes ran through the trees alongside him. They had trailed the cattle all the way from Texas, knowing that eventually, one of these cattle would die. And now they smelled blood.  The coyotes scattered when Jake broke through the tree line. He found Cherry Cole at the top of a low ravine, standing above a trembling calf, alone.

"You can't do it Jake."

Jake shaded his eyes with his hat. "I do not want to have this conversation," said Jake, "there's nothing to be done for it." Jake got down off of Horse, and walked toward Cherry. He looked into the thick of the trees. Into the darkness. “I’ll be blunt, Cherry, I take no joy in it. If you are going to delay something that I cannot change, I would rather stop, so that I can finish with it all the sooner.”

Cherry stared at the trembling calf. Jake wasn’t sure he even heard a word of what he’d just said. “You can’t just kill it,” Cherry said.

“If I don’t shoot this calf, someone else will. You let it go, the coyotes will get it. We bring it along it will fall behind and the coyotes will get it. Or it will be trampled. And then the coyotes will get it.”

“You can’t kill something because it’s convenient,” said Cherry, “Isn’t the whole point of a drive to keep the damn cows alive? It’s cruel.”

“Cruelty is the word moneyed people use when they finally get a taste of how it is for the rest of us. So yeah, it is cruel. It’s also what I have to do.” 

“I’ll do it then,” said Cherry. He pulled a gigantic pistol from a holster on his side. _What the hell is that_ , thought Jake, _an elephant pistol? Do they even make those?_

“Kindred is going to get here in a few hours with the chuck wagon to clean it and get a stew ready. You want to wait here? Coyotes nipping at your heels? There’s at least three or four other cows expecting and more than likely this won’t be the last one. So why don’t you--” Jake moved a tangle of hair out of Cherry’s eye. The man was on the verge of tears. An alarm inside Jake tripped and he stepped backward in shock. “Stop it now,” said Jake, “you can't carry on like this over a calf.”

“The world is cruel,” said Cherry, “but I don’t like that you feel you have to be.”

“It is my job and nothing more.” Jake would rather burrow six feet into the dirt with his bare hands than be around someone who was crying. He rubbed the stubble on his chin and stared into the sky. “I’m serious about the coyotes. You better get."

“I apologize for making you uncomfortable,” said Cherry, “I do not mean to weep so.”

“No,” said Jake, “It’s not you it’s--” But what was it? Jake thought of vast grasslands. Of comfort in solitude. "It is hard for me to see how easy it is for someone else to feel something profound. To feel that way about a calf? Not sure I've felt that way about anything in my life.”

“Leave me.” Cherry pointed the giant pistol at the calf. Both were trembling. The tears ran down Cherry’s face in an ugly wet stream. Jake took the pistol from Cherry's hand.

"Go on now," said Jake. Cherry looked up at him and he did not flinch. Something inside him burned. It felt like a physical pain. But he did not look away. "I got this."

Cherry relented and got up onto his horse. Jake waited until he was out of sight. Then Jake shot the calf dead.

That night Jake waited for Cherry at supper. But he was nowhere to be seen. As the men around him tore through the veal like wolves, Jake searched the darkness. When he went out to ride the line, Cherry was not waiting for him. He was alone. And for the first time in his life it bothered him.

*   *   *

The last embers of the campfire blew red hot among the swirling ash before they too burned out. A thousand head of bar arrow cattle made it to Cheyenne and it was time to celebrate. Dustin Kreuger, the trail boss, handed off the herd to a seller who handled the auction and sale of cattle. He collected his own fee, then went through Kindreds books, deducting food and supplies from each man's pay. When all was told, he paid Jake sixty dollars. Less than one percent of the profit the cattle would sell for. Eamon grumbled when the pay went out, but Jake stayed silent. "Scraps," said Eamon, "Like we're nothin' but Cyotes, driving cattle for our own pleasure."

"Sixty is enough."

Eamon scoffed. "Enough for what? Enough for a man to eat but still be starvin'. And Dustin, what did he do? You know he got paid one hundred dollars?" Eamon pronounced hundred as _hun-nerd_.

"Enough for me to get back to Texas," said Jake. And he stood up and walked into town.

Something changed between Cherry and Jake the day he killed the calf. After a few days Cherry stopped coming on their nightly rides. He started looking haggard and tired. Cherry was a terrible liar, and the man held a secret like a cotton sack held water. Jake knew all he had to do was ask, and it would come tumbling out of Cherry whether the man wanted to or not. But he didn't. It wasn't the first time Jake found himself caught up with a man during a cattle drive. And there it was natural for things to cool off once you got back into town. Jake accepted it. But he didn't want to know where Cherry was spending his nights. Of course, things had to end. They always did. But somehow, Jake had allowed himself to hope, for once, it might be different. _Damn my eyes,_ he thought, _I am a fool._

"Hey," said a voice from the darkness, "Marigold, come here."

Jake turned. It was Cherry. He was hiding behind the chuck wagon, in the shadows. The second Jake saw the tumble of blonde hair all of his worries fell away, and despite the curse he just placed upon himself, he smiled.

"What game is this--"

Cherry shushed him, making more noise than Jake had. "Quiet!" Jake shook his head and followed, but a grin worked its way across his face. Cherry led him by the hand. The sounds of Cheyenne faded into the trees around them. A fiddle bounced off the trees so many times it sounded like it was accompanying itself. Cherry laughed, then started to run, pulling Jake along with him.

The hoots and hollers faded away. All Jake could hear was the sound of his breath, and the crunch of gravel and dirt as he followed Cherry deeper into the brush. "I have a surprise," said Cherry.

"I do take to surprises," said Jake.

"How do you know you won't like it, when you don't know what it will be?"

"You are testing me, Cherry," but Jake couldn't keep his voice stern. He was thankful for the darkness because his face felt hot. He was pretty sure he was blushing. _Where are you taking me_ , he wondered.

They walked along a path that cut through a grove of thick pine trees. Boughs heavy with pine cones hovered over them like accusing fingers. "We've gone far enough for you to spring whatever trap you've set for me," said Jake. Cherry laughed and ran off down a steep bank. Jake followed. But he was never as sure on his feet as he was on a horse. He had trouble navigating the shifting sands and sliding rocks. He cursed and grumbled until the trees thinned out and the ones that remained were blackened and burned. The ground was covered in ash, and Jake saw where the fire had cut through the mountains around him. "Why have you brought me here?" he asked, but Cherry was gone. "This is not a romantic area," he said to himself.

"What surprise, exactly, do you think you are in for?" asked Cherry. Somehow, the man had gotten behind him. Jake turned, then slid on a rock and grabbed hold of Cherry. His blush of excitement turned to one of embarrassment.

"Cherry, stop this. I will not keep carrying on and being made a fool of," said Jake.

Cherry helped him up. "It may be a bit late for that my dear friend."

Jake dusted himself off then stood up to his full height. "Pardon?"

"You only pretend you don't like funning with me."

"Tell me now or I will leave this damn place. I am not having fun with you Cherry Cole, and I will not be the subject of your fun."

"You are more sensitive than a prickled porcupine," said Cherry with a smile, "trust me, we are almost there." Jake hesitated. Then he followed Cherry Cole to wherever the man would lead him.

They descended a rocky outcrop until they came to a hallow in the stone. Half cave, half crater. But it was not empty. Jake took off his hat and rubbed his temples. "What have you done, Cherry" he said.

Cherry smiled, a large toothy smile, perfect and charming. Cherry walked over to four skinny calves, and patted one of them on the head. "It's genius, Jake. Pure genius."

Jake pulled out his revolver. "We've got to dispose of them, before anyone else see's them--"

Cherry saw and his face fell to horror, he threw himself in front of the calves and protested. "Jake, stop it now. Can't you see? This is an opportunity--"

"This is what you've been doing? All these nights?" Jake lowered the revolver a few inches. "I thought you were off--, this is what you were doing?"

Cherry laughed, and the inside of Jake's stomach turn. "You thought I was warming some rattlesnakes bed?" Cherry laughed again.

"Do not mock me," said Jake.

"You're the only half decent looking man within two states, Jake Boot, if you think I'm clamoring to get into Eamon Trank's pants then--"

"What scenario do you suppose my mind was supposed to conjure?" asked Jake, "When the man-- When you disappear, without bothering to involve me. Never in a million years would I have guessed this."

"Well," Cherry's grin returned, "When you killed that calf it got me to thinking. They're throwing away money here. Each calf, at minimum, is worth forty dollars. Veal might even sell for _more_ than beef. All that, just wasted. Well, I work the back of the line, and the ones about to give birth usually end up lagging. When I started looking for it, it was easy to find. I'd find one, lead her to a clear spot, and then each night, I'd come back, lead the cow and her little dogies until morning. Slow and steady. I never even got that far behind, if you can believe it--"

Jake's voice cracked, "You have killed us!"

"Killed?" Cherry asked. "I didn't kill--"

"Rustling? Thievery? Do you not understand?" Jake watched the hurt cross over Cherry's face like the wind across a field, but he couldn't stop.

"It is not theft to take what another man has thrown away. Just trust me, I have a connection in Cheyenne and we can--"

"They told me you were a fool, and somehow I let myself..."

"You wanted to be with me," said Cherry. It was a statement, but he said the words like they were part of a question. A tear gathered on his eyelash, but did not fall. "Jake, we're good together. Just let me show you how good we can be. They aren't gonna hire me on another drive, you know that. I can't just let this be over."

"Stop!" shouted Jake. "You had a dream because you are a man who's failed at everything he's tried. Just like every other man I know. But not me. I survive because I know when you push, and when you don't. Because, Cherry, the world don't push back. She buries you. And, Cherry Cole, frankly you're not smart enough to see it coming until the dirts settled."

"Most men work three, four drives, and cut out. Jake, you've worked nine! If we sell a single head that's enough to start your own ranch--"

"You're right, that is enough." Jake turned and walked away. But the way was blocked.

"If you're going to get cold feet..."

Jake took a step back. A woman stood at the edge of the hollow, in the last of the days light.

"I wish you would have told me before I walked halfway across creation to get here," said Grace McCall.


End file.
